New guidelines published by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) recommend that physicians consider digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) exams as an option for their patients' annual breast cancer screening.
The NCCN guidelines, published in "NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology: Breast Cancer Screening and Diagnosis," were developed and updated by an impartial, physician-led group consisting of 48 individual panels and comprising more than 1,150 clinicians and oncology researchers from the 27 NCCN member institutions.
The guidelines were approved with uniform consensus (Category 2A) and state that "multiple studies show a combined use of digital mammography and tomosynthesis appears to improve cancer detection and decrease callback rates. Of note, most studies used double the dose of radiation. The radiation dose can be minimized by synthetic 2D reconstruction."
