A panel of leading breast disease specialists has agreed that percutaneous needle biopsy should be the standard for initial diagnosis of breast abnormalities, according to a report published in this month's Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
The report, produced by the International Breast Cancer Consensus Conference, found that 35% of initial diagnostic breast biopsies in the U.S. are being done with open surgical techniques, despite the fact that open surgery costs three times as much and is much more invasive than needle biopsy.
Although there is clinical agreement that needle biopsy should be the standard of care, there was only a small decrease in the number of surgical biopsies since the last conference four years ago, according to Dr. Melvin Silverstein, chair of the conference and medical director of Hoag Breast Care Center in Newport Beach, CA.
"Considering only 15% to 20% of abnormalities found by mammography turn out to be cancer, this means a significant number of women with benign lesions are undergoing unneeded diagnostic surgery when needle biopsy is equally effective for discovering cancer," Silverstein wrote.
The panel recommended that surgeons audit their practice and strive to decrease their rate of open biopsy for initial diagnosis to less than 5% to 10%.
The conference was supported by a grant from Ethicon Endo-Surgery of Cincinnati, which makes needle biopsy devices.
Related Reading
Study: How well does MRI-guided breast biopsy work? December 5, 2008
Presence of invasive cancer may cause MR-guided biopsy to miss DCIS, August 16, 2007
Spring-loaded biopsy poses potential hazard of artificial tumor spread, December 27, 2006
Copyright © 2009 AuntMinnie.com
