The assessment of sonography in distinguishing benign from malignant solid breast mass, can it be improved?

Abstract EN

Objective : to determine whether sonography could help accurately distinguish benign solid breast masses from malignant ones and whether its role can be improved.

Patients and Methods : between November 2007 and January 2009, 243 female patients with breast lesions diagnosed by their managing surgeons, were sonographically assessed.

Those who had solid lesions were selected for a prospective study through comparison with the histopathological finding of the open biopsies taken from the lesions.

US features that most reliably characterize masses as benign or malignant had been strictly applied for diagnosing these cases.

Sonographic classifications were compared with histopathological reports of the biopsies.

The sensitivity, specificity, and negative and positive predictive values of the sonography were calculated.

Results : sonographically, 108 (44%) cases were classified as benign and 135 (56%) were malignant.

12 (11%) lesions classified as benign sonographically, were found to be malignant histopathologically.

33 (24%) lesion classified as malignant were found to be benign histopathologically.

Thus, the classification scheme had a negative predictive value of 89% and positive predictive value 75%.

Conclusion : sonography can be used to identify most benign solid lesions for follow up through imaging.

Making use of FNA cytology and True-cut needle biopsy, in addition to including mammography will eliminate son graphic mishaps.