Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Adding digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) to a breast screening program improves the cost-effectiveness of screening compared with conventional mammography alone, according to a new paper we're featuring in our Women's Imaging Community.
Researchers from the University of Washington wanted to find out if DBT could be a better alternative for screening than other modalities, such as MRI or ultrasound. They used a benchmark typically employed in the health policy realm, quality-adjusted life year (QALY), for measuring the cost-effectiveness of an intervention in improving the health and well-being of an individual.
They found that adding DBT to mammography screening resulted in a QALY of $53,893, well below the commonly accepted threshold of $100,000 for a cost-effective test. Learn more about the study by clicking here.
In other news on mammography screening, a new study from Canada examined the effectiveness of breast screening and came to very different conclusions than a controversial Canadian study published earlier this year.
In the new study, researchers from British Columbia looked at mortality rates across seven provincial breast screening programs in the country covering 2.8 million women, comparing women who were screened with those who weren't. They found that women who participated in breast screening had a 40% lower breast cancer death rate.
How will the study affect the roiling debate over breast screening? Mammography skeptics will probably point out that the research was an observational study, as opposed to a randomized controlled trial, which carries more weight among health policy experts. But it is still another positive development for mammography's defenders.
Read more by clicking here, or visit our Women's Imaging Community at women.auntminnie.com.
Wrist radiography
We close with an article in our AuntMinnie Middle East section on the use of radiography for detecting wrist fractures in the emergency room. Researchers from Turkey found that radiography missed one-third of fractures that would have been detected on multidetector-row CT. Read more by clicking here, or visit the section at me.auntminnie.com.
