General practitioner awareness in use of breast imaging modalities

General practitioners (GPs) are the first line of the doctors visiting many patients with breast problems. So, their knowledge about breast diseases is very important. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the awareness of general practitioners in use of breast imaging modalities.

In this cross sectional study, we asked every GP participant in the Annual GPs Conference to complete a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire elicited information about the general practitioner's characteristics (age, gender, years after graduation and city of practice) and eight questions about patients with breast problems and their managements.

In all, 275 general practitioners completed the questionnaire (157 female and 118 male) with mean age of 34 years and mean years after graduation of 6.7. Fifty-eight percent of them were occupied in Tehran. The results indicated significant correlation between the time of graduation and increasing the number of false answers to the questions (P=0.011). There were no association between the other variables and the number of false answers.

The findings suggest the need of implement educational course about breast disease for general practitioners.