Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Tomosynthesis detects more breast cancers

Friedewald at al report in a JAMA article a retrospective analysis of performance metrics of Tomosynthesis and Digital Mammography from 13 academic and nonacademic breast centers.  
Patients were studied under two different protocols: those who had digital mammography screening alone and those who in addition to digital mammography, tomosynthesis was added .
A total of 454850 examinations (n=281187 digital mammography; n=173663 digital mammography + tomosynthesis) were evaluated. With digital mammography, 29726 patients were recalled and 5056 biopsies resulted in cancer diagnosis in 1207 patients (n=815 invasive; n=392 in situ). With digital mammography + tomosynthesis, 15541 patients were recalled and 3285 biopsies resulted in cancer diagnosis in 950 patients (n=707 invasive; n=243 in situ). Model-adjusted rates per 1000 screens were as follows: for recall rate, 107 (95% CI, 89-124) with digital mammography vs 91 (95% CI, 73-108) with digital mammography + tomosynthesis; difference, –16 (95% CI, –18 to –14; P<.001); for biopsies, 18.1 (95% CI, 15.4-20.8) with digital mammography vs 19.3 (95% CI, 16.6-22.1) with digital mammography + tomosynthesis; difference, 1.3 (95% CI, 0.4-2.1; P=.004); for cancer detection, 4.2 (95% CI, 3.8-4.7) with digital mammography vs 5.4 (95% CI, 4.9-6.0) with digital mammography + tomosynthesis; difference, 1.2 (95% CI, 0.8-1.6; P<.001); and for invasive cancer detection, 2.9 (95% CI, 2.5-3.2) with digital mammography vs 4.1 (95% CI, 3.7-4.5) with digital mammography + tomosynthesis; difference, 1.2 (95% CI, 0.8-1.6; P<.001). The in situ cancer detection rate was 1.4 (95% CI, 1.2-1.6) per 1000 screens with both methods. Adding tomosynthesis was associated with an increase in the positive predictive value for recall from 4.3% to 6.4% (difference, 2.1%; 95% CI, 1.7%-2.5%; P<.001) and for biopsy from 24.2% to 29.2% (difference, 5.0%; 95% CI, 3.0%-7.0%; P<.001).

The authors conclude the addition of tomosynthesis to digital mammography was associated with a decrease in recall rate and an increase in cancer detection rate.


An editorial by Drs. Pisano and Yaffe on Tomosynthesis appears in the same issue of JAMA.

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