This finding suggests that there's plenty of opportunity to increase the use of these modalities -- which, when used with mammography, can be more effective at identifying cancer than mammography alone, wrote a group led by Machaon Bonafede, PhD, of IBM Watson Health.
Bonafede and colleagues analyzed insurance claims to assess the use and cost of digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) and breast ultrasound performed in conjunction with digital mammography. They used data from the Truven Health MarketScan Commercial database (Truven Health is a subsidiary of IBM Watson Health) to identify women between the ages of 40 and 64 who underwent screening mammography in 2015. The researchers assessed whether the women received digital mammography alone, digital mammography plus DBT, digital mammography plus ultrasound, or all three exams.
Out of 1.4 million women who had a screening mammogram and met the study's inclusion criteria, 9.1% underwent mammography plus DBT, 3.2% underwent mammography plus ultrasound, and 0.4% underwent all three exams. The use of mammography plus DBT and mammography plus ultrasound was highest for women ages 40 to 49 (9.4% and 4.3%) and lowest for women ages 60 to 64 (8.4% and 2.8%).
Average screening costs were $63.62 higher for mammography plus DBT than for mammography alone and $241.27 higher for mammography plus ultrasound than for mammography alone, Bonafede and colleagues found.
