Table 4.
Procedural audit measures that reflect a linear trend across surgeon performance quartiles*
| Quartile of procedural errors |
||||
| Procedural audit measure | 1 (n = 575) | 2 (n = 578) | 3 (n = 543) | 4 (n = 508) |
| TSC injected on four sides of the tumor, No. (%) | 7 (1.2) | 8 (1.4) | 22 (4.1) | 25 (4.9) |
| Volume of TSC, No. (%) | 11 (1.9) | 39 (6.7) | 53 (9.8) | 58 (11.4) |
| Dose TSC, No. (%) | 5 (0.9) | 25 (4.3) | 23 (4.2) | 55 (10.8) |
| Volume of blue dye, No. (%) | 1 (0.2) | 7 (1.2) | 9 (1.7) | 35 (6.9) |
| Blue dye injection before survey, No. (%) | 2 (0.43) | 5 (0.9) | 29 (5.3) | 112 (22.0) |
| Saline used if necessary, No. (%) | 0 (0.0) | 2 (0.43) | 7 (1.3) | 26 (5.1) |
| Bed count >10% of hottest node or no source document, No. (%) | 3 (0.5) | 15 (2.6) | 23 (4.2) | 24 (4.7) |
| No hot spot identified, No. (%) | 15 (2.6) | 37 (6.4) | 58 (10.7) | 72 (14.2) |
| Other, No. (%) | 9 (1.6) | 43 (7.4) | 83 (15.3) | 139 (27.4) |
*
For the 152 audited surgeons who had at least one patient with a positive lymph node, nine of the 25 individual audit measures had a Cochran–Armitage trend test P value of less than .001 that reflected the linear trend across surgeon performance quartiles. These nine audit measures are listed in this table. Percentage of operations with procedural error is listed separately for each quartile on the basis of the mean number of procedural errors. n = the number of operations; TSC = Technetium-99m sulfur colloid.