Sunday, November 30 | 2:30 p.m.-2:40 p.m. | S5-SSBR02-1 | Room S406A
Attendees in this session will learn how volumetric breast density may lead to more women being classified as being at high risk for breast cancer.
Stamatia Destounis, MD, chair of the American College of Radiology (ACR) Breast Imaging Commission, will present her team’s findings, which show how this factor affects high-risk classification using conventional risk models.
Recent guidelines by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network recommend that breast density be included in breast cancer risk assessment. Risk models such as Tyrer-Cuzick (TC) and the Breast and Ovarian Analysis of Disease Incidence and Carrier Estimation Algorithm (BA) traditionally center on family history.
Destounis and colleagues studied how volumetric breast density affects the performance of these models, with their study including nearly 45,000 women who underwent screening mammography.
The researchers found the following percentages classified as high risk: 9.8% for BA, 14.8% for TC with competing mortality at age 80, and 19.1% for TC with competing mortality. Without competing mortality, TC classified 27.4% as high risk at age 85 and 19% at age 80.
Also, including breast density in risk analysis led to higher average recall rates in TC (1.21) compared with BA (1.16), while recall rates due to family history were higher in TC (1.21 vs. 1.17).
Among patients identified as high risk by TC, 2.8% had a family history that did not significantly raise their risk. This was based on model-calculated recall rates from family history.
“These women were still classified as high risk due to elevated breast density, with a mean density RR of 2.25,” the team highlighted.
For the BA model, 2.4% of women had a family history that added little to no risk but had high density-related risk (mean density recall rate, 2.26).
Attend this session to learn more!



