According to a new 10-year study, screening for breast cancer with digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) increases cancer detection rates and significantly reduces the rate of advanced cancers compared to conventional 2D digital mammography. The findings were published today in Radiology , a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Mammography is considered the gold standard in breast cancer screening for the general population.
However, conventional 2D mammography, in which a low-dose X-ray system produces pictures of the inside of the breast from two angles, fails to detect approximately 20% of breast cancers. It is also associated with false-positive results, where an abnormality seen on a screening mammogram turns out not to be cancer after a woman has been recalled for and undergone additional tests. DBT is an advanced form of mammography that reconstructs pictures of the breast taken from different angles into 3D images.
Studies have found that DBT has a higher cancer detection rate compared to digital mammography. This study is the first to compare 10 years of data on breast cancers detected by DBT to digital mammography-detected cancers." Jaskirandeep Kaur Grewal, PA-C.
, co-author, previous student at Yale School of Medicine Physician Associate Program In the retrospective study, Dr. Philpotts and a team of researchers analyzed consecutive cancer cases detected by screening mammography over 13 years at Yale University/Yale-New Haven Health. The data i.