In a study of over a million patients, digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) showed improved breast cancer screening outcomes over screening with standard digital mammography alone. The results were published by Conant et al in Radiology.
Breast cancer screening with two-dimensional (2D) digital mammography alone is still the standard of care at many sites, but it has its limitations due to its inability to detect some cancers. There is a growing amount of evidence that DBT, a more advanced technology, has a higher breast cancer detection rate due to its ability to capture multiple x-ray images of the breast from different angles rather than the typical single image obtained with a standard 2D mammogram. DBT is especially beneficial for patients with denser breast tissue.
“The purpose of our study was to evaluate screening outcomes among a large [patient] cohort in the United States who were screened with either 2D digital mammography alone or with DBT,” said first study author Emily F. Conant, MD, FSBI, Professor of Radiology and Chief in the Division of Breast Imaging at the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
For this retrospective cohort study, Dr. Conant and colleagues compiled data from five large health-care systems across the United States. The study group consisted of over 1 million patients aged 40 to 79 years who were screened with either DBT or 2D digital mammography alone between January 2014 and December 2020. Screening outcomes such as cancer detection and false-positive rates were compared across the two screening groups.
“This study was extremely large, with most [patients] having at least two screens, resulting in over 2 million screening exams across five large and diverse health-care systems,” Dr. Conant said.
Compared to 2D digital mammography alone, DBT was associated with important improvements in screening outcomes. The cancer detection rate for patients screened with DBT was higher, at 5.3 per 1,000 screened, compared to 4.5 per 1,000 screened with 2D digital mammography only. DBT also had a lower rate of false-positives and recalls from screening.
“We showed that the most important mammographic screening outcomes—increased cancer detection combined with fewer false-positives—were significantly improved when [patients] were screened with digital breast tomosynthesis compared to 2D digital mammography alone,” Dr. Conant said. “Therefore, [patients] should seek out sites that routinely offer breast cancer screening with DBT.”
Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit pubs.rsna.org.
