Home Hematology and Oncology Majority of Cancers Diagnosed Within Six Months of BI-RADS 3

Majority of Cancers Diagnosed Within Six Months of BI-RADS 3

Cancer yield 4.6 percent for women who underwent biopsy at time of lesion detection

TUESDAY, May 19, 2020 (HealthDay News) — More than half of malignancies identified among women with Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) category 3 lesions are diagnosed within six months, according to a study published online May 19 in Radiology.

Wendie A. Berg, M.D., Ph.D., from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues examined outcomes from six-, 12-, and 24-month follow-up of probably benign findings identified at recall for 45,202 women with BI-RADS category 3 lesions from the National Mammography Database.

The researchers found that 1,574 women underwent biopsy at the time of lesion detection, which yielded 72 cancers (cancer yield, 4.6 percent). For the remaining 43,628 women, 922 were seen within 90 days; 78 lesions were biopsied and 12 were classified as malignant (15 percent). The 31,465 women still in surveillance (72.5 percent) underwent follow-up mammography at six months; 456 of 3,001 lesions biopsied were malignant (cancer yield, 1.5 percent). Of the 18,748 women in surveillance who underwent follow-up at 12 months, 1,219 underwent biopsy, with 230 malignant lesions found (cancer yield, 1.2 percent). Through two-year follow-up, the rate of biopsy was 11.2 percent, with a cancer yield of 1.86 percent (810 malignancies among 43,628 women) and a positive predictive value of biopsies performed of 16.6 percent.

“The majority of cancers were diagnosed at or right after the six-month follow-up, so it actually is important to get these patients back in that six-month time frame,” Berg said in a statement.

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