More Call-Backs

Digital technology has certainly brought many changes to the world of breast imaging. Where I work, we got our first digital mammography machine about four years ago and have been slowly converting to an all-digital workplace ever since.

With the onset of this technology, many obvious things have changed. For one, being able to perform screening mammograms much faster has allowed us to reexamine and adjust our patient flow. Most of the changes brought about with this new technology were expected and welcomed. 

There were however, some unexpected changes. An increase in the number of technical call backs was noted, and after looking at why these patients were being called back, we realized many were returning to get nipple-in-profile views. That was unusual because I do work with many seasoned technologists.

After reviewing many of the cases, we realized that digital technology was now enhancing the skin line of the breast so much that any slight turn of the nipple was very obvious on the image.

Film-screen imaging burned out much of this and we were never even aware of it. So to combat this, we as a department, are taking many more nipple-in-profile views before we let our patients go.

If anything, this phenomenon has made us much more aware of our positioning during an exam. On the positive side, we are able to finally visualize all of the IMF that I knew we were getting on our films, but were never able to see really well! Also, the cleavage tissue seems to jump out much more on CC views  in the digital world.

With a little more diligence in regards to positioning, we are able to produce a much nicer looking image, which makes the radiologist happy, the patients happy and ultimately our job easier!  It would be interesting to hear of what unexpected changes your department experienced while converting over to digital.