Adding ultrasound screening to mammography brings benefits, risks

The goal of the study was to determine whether the addition of a screening ultrasound to the current screening practice of mammography would reveal more cancers than mammography alone. Ultrasound screening uses high frequency sound waves to depict and detect tumors, while mammography – the current gold standard for breast cancer screening – uses low-dose X-ray.

During the first year of screening, mammography alone revealed breast cancers at a rate of 8 for every 1,000 women screened and resulted in 25 women for every 1,000 screened having an unnecessary biopsy due to a false positive exam. The combination of mammography and ultra-sound revealed breast cancers at a rate of 12 for every 1,000 women screened and resulted in 93 women for every 1,000 screened having an unnecessary biopsy due to a false positive exam.

So the ultrasound exam caught cancer in four additional women. But the exam also caused false positive findings in 68 additional women for every 1,000 screened – a four-fold increase.

“This false positive rate is significant,” Blume said. “And the combination of screening exams, both mammography and ultrasound, still missed one out of every five cancers. So the trial shows that ultrasound is not a silver bullet for breast cancer screening.”

At Brown, the ACRIN Biostatistics and Data Management Center provides leadership and sup-port in the design, implementation, and analysis of network studies that examine the role of imaging in the diagnosis and disease management of cancer. Center faculty are involved in every step of each study, from the early development of concepts to the final analysis of the data to the preparation of reports and manuscripts. Center faculty are currently involved in nearly 30 trials sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, a part of the National Institutes of Health.

The National Cancer Institute and the Avon Foundation funded the work.

Editors: Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and interna-tional live and taped interviews and maintains an ISDN line for radio interviews. For more in-formation, call the Office of Media Relations at (401) 863-2476.