Waiting time and the psychosocial consequences of false-positive mammography: cohort study

Bruno Heleno, Volkert Siersma, John Brodersen

There is wide variation in the psychosocial response to false-positive mammography. We aimed to assess whether women having to wait longer to exclude cancer had increased psychosocial consequences that persisted after cancer was ruled out. We selected women with false-positive mammography (n = 272), screened for breast cancer in Copenhagen and Funen (Denmark) over a 1-year period. We measured psychosocial consequences immediately before women attended their recall visit and 1, 6, 18 and 36 months after women received their final diagnosis. After women were told that cancer had been ruled out, adverse psychosocial consequences decreased with time. We found no statistically significant differences between who had cancer ruled out immediately at the recall visit (waiting time of 0) and women who had to wait longer before cancer was ruled out (waiting times 1-30, 30-120 and > 120 days). We found no differences compared psychosocial consequences measured via a condition-specific questionnaire (Consequences of Screening in Breast Cancer) at 5 time points (0, 1, 6, 18 and 36 months after cancer exclusion) and compared groups of women based on how long they had to wait until cancer exclusion. Psychosocial consequences were not associated with this waiting time. We did not confirm that waiting time was associated with worse long-term psychosocial consequences but type II error (failure to detect a true difference) might be a plausible explanation for our results.