In this Sunday morning session, Dr. Min Sun Bae, of Seoul National University Hospital, and colleagues will present results from a study that retrospectively analyzed negative mammograms of women with breast cancers detected at screening ultrasound.
Bae's group performed a retrospective review of 354 ultrasound-detected breast cancers (291 of which were invasive) in 350 asymptomatic women who had negative mammography reports between December 2003 and December 2011. The women had undergone two-view mammograms after having preoperative ultrasound-guided hook wire placement and/or breast MRI. Three radiologists reviewed the mammograms to determine breast density, lesion visibility, and possible reasons that mammography did not detect the cancer.
Why did mammography fail to find these malignancies? It was due to one of three reasons, according to Bae and colleagues: the presence of dense parenchyma (78%), interpretation error (19%), and the anatomic area not being included at routine mammography (2.5%). Of the interpretive errors, 23% were evident after the fact, and 77% were considered subtle findings, according to the researchers.
