Impact of Hours Awake and Hours Slept at Night on Radiologists’ Mammogram Interpretations

Objectives To examine whether radiologists’ mammogram reading performance varies according to how long they have been awake (“hours awake”) and the number of hours they slept (“hours slept”) the night before a reading session. Methods Retrospective data were retrieved from the BreastScreen Reader Assessment Strategy database. Malignancy-enriched mammographic readings were performed by 133 radiologists. Information on their hours awake and hours slept was collected. Analysis of covariance was performed to determine whether these two variables influenced radiologists’ sensitivity, specificity, lesion sensitivity, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and jackknife alternative free-response ROC. Radiologists were divided into a more experienced and a less experienced groups (based on reading ≥2,000 and Results The hours awake significantly influenced less experienced radiologists’ lesion sensitivity (F6,63 = 2.51; P = .03). Those awake for Conclusion Inexperienced radiologists’ performance may be influenced by the hours awake and hours slept before reading sessions.