Breast screening tool lowers need for biopsies
Last Updated: Monday, November 30, 2009 | 3:08 PM ET
CBC News
A new screening technique used in conjunction with ultrasound could reduce the need for breast biopsies, new research suggests.
Elastography, a computerized screening tool that analyzes breast tumours, has been found to heighten diagnostic accuracy over ultrasound alone. It may eventually help alleviate the anxiety of women being screened for breast cancer by giving them definitive results sooner.
In 2009, an estimated 22,700 women in Canada will be diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
While ultrasound can help differentiate between benign and malignant tumours, its specificity isn't that high, and it frequently leads to more invasive procedures such as breast biopsy.
But elastography, which provides a compressed view of a lesion, can more effectively show the shape of the tumour and the surrounding tissues, offering more clues as to its malignancy potential.
"You can perform elastography at the same time as handheld ultrasound and view the images on a split screen, with the two-dimensional ultrasound image on the left and the elastography image on the right," lead researcher Stamatia Destounis, a diagnostic radiologist at Elizabeth Wende Breast Care in Rochester, N.Y., said Monday in a release.
"It's an easy way to eliminate needle biopsy for something that's probably benign."
Findings from Destounis's ongoing study have not been published, but were presented Monday at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago.
In the research, 179 patients with breast lumps underwent ultrasounds in conjunction with elastography. Biopsies were done on all solid breast lesions.
The scientists found 56 cancers among the 134 biopsies, with elastography identifying 98 per cent of the lesions with malignant properties and 82 per cent of those deemed benign. The technique also was also more effective at mapping out the size of the lesion versus ultrasound alone.
In addition to her research, Destounis sits on advisory boards for several companies in the breast-imaging field.
