Does participation in an epidemiological study improve appropriate prescription of screening mammography for asymptomatic women?

The study shows that appropriate requests for screening mammography (SM) increased in centers participating in a collaborative epidemiological study on menopause in Italy over a 3-year period. Lacking comparative data about Italian clinical practice outside the study during the same period, we cannot attribute this change only to participation in the study. A slight decrease in the proportion of SM was observed during the second semester of 1999, but after this period we observed an increase that suggests an improvement of quality of care. It suggests that taking part in epidemiological research – even on a limited scale – improves clinical practice. Another point of interest in this analysis is the observation that SM is more frequently required in women with a family history of breast cancer and HRT use.