ArticleAnnals of medicine and surgery (2012)2021
Online application for self-referral of the patients with breast symptoms.
Article in Annals of medicine and surgery (2012), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evaluating a novel patient pathway to manage symptomatic breast referrals (the blue flag clinic): a longitudinal observational study.Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England · 2025Observational
- Use of artificial intelligence to identify patients to be assessed in a breast clinic on 2-week wait: a retrospective cohort study.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionThe study aimed to devise a self-referral mobile/web application for patients with new breast symptoms, giving them an outcome, thus bypassing the need for primary care consultation.
methodsThe online application was designed on the automated algorithm based on evidence-based guidelines for referral to breast onco-plastic units. A retrospective questionnaire-based anonymous survey was carried out at the breast unit in Southend University Hospital (January 2019 to March 2020). The outcome of the patients was recorded, the same data was entered in the software and its outcome was compared with their clinic outcome to assess and validate the software. Chi-square and
resultsData was collected for 366 patients who were referred urgently to the clinic. Only 50.5% (n = 186) were appropriately referred, with the main complaint being breast lump (94.1%). 39.6% of referred patients did not require a secondary care referral. Sensitivity and specificity for identifying patients requiring urgent referral was 100% and 98%, respectively.
conclusionA significant number of urgent referrals to breast units do not require urgent specialist referral, and this results in a big strain on the hospital service. The discussed self-referral pathway is a promising alternative with the potential to reduce workload in primary and secondary care and improve patient satisfaction.
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