Background: Breast cancer remains one of the leading causes of death in women over the age of 40 years. Breast cancer screening is used to identify women with asymptomatic cancer with the goal of enabling women to undergo less invasive treatments that lead to better outcomes, ideally at earlier stages, and before the cancer progresses.
Objective: To evaluate the additional value of Elastography as complementary to conventional US in breast masses found on screening US.
Patients and methods: The study was performed prospectively between April 2020 and October 2020 at Elsayed Galal University Hospital in 35 consecutive female patients with 39 breast lesions who met all inclusion criteria and no exclusion criteria.
Results: This study included 35 female patients (with 39 breast lesions). Their ages ranged from 16 to 68 years old with mean age 46 ± 12.7 (mean ± SD). In this study, 8 /39 (20.5 %) cases were almost fatty (ACR “a") in which 6/6 cases were malignant & 24/39 (61.5%) with scattered area of fibro-glandular tissue (ACR “b") in which 8/24 cases were malignant and 7/39 (17.9 %) cases were heterogeneously dense breasts (ACR “c") in which 3/7 cases were malignant. Lesions that scored 1, 2, and 3 were considered benign 24/39(61.5 %) cases, whereas lesions that scored 4 and 5 15/39 (38.5%) cases, were considered malignant. When considering lesions with strain ratio less than 3.0 as benign and lesions with strain ratio more than or equal 3.0 as malignant, 15/39 (38.5) lesions were benign, 24/39 (61.5 %) were malignant by strain ratio.
Conclusion: US Elastography provides useful information about distinguishing benign and malignant lesions. Thus, consideration of lesion stiffness could increase positive predictive values and reduce unnecessary benign biopsies.