Dr. Rounak Bafana, from Henry Ford Hospital, and colleagues compared the performance of ultrasound-guided biopsy and CT-guided biopsy for primary and metastatic bone lesions. The group included data from 116 patients who presented with lesions suspicious for cancer; 83 patients underwent percutaneous core-needle biopsy and/or fine-needle aspiration using CT, while 33 had these procedures using ultrasound. The researchers categorized the samples by lesion characteristics, biopsy type, and whether they were diagnostic or nondiagnostic.
Overall accuracy was 87.9% for both ultrasound- and CT-guided cases, and the biopsy results were further broken down by lesion size.
Because ultrasound has comparable accuracy to CT -- along with a lower cost, a lack of radiation, and the ability to perform procedures at bedside -- the modality is ideal for investigating suspicious bone lesions, the group concluded.
