Comparison between Radiological and Invasive Diagnostic Modalities in Diagnosis of Breast Cancer

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cause of deaths of cancer in women. Nowadays, followingcompletion of imaging methods, mainly fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) and core biopsy methods havebeen used for establishing cytopathological diagnosis although discussions regarding superiority continue.Materials and
Methods: Those with a complaint of “mass in breast” along with those diagnosed to have a massas a result of routine physical examination among all patients applying to our clinic between 01.01.2009 and31.12.2011 were retrospectively assessed. Totals of 146 and 64 patients with complete radiological observationwho had undergone FNAB and core biopsies, respectively, were evaluated. Postoperative pathological resultsof patients of both groups receiving surgery were also taken into consideration. All results were compared interms of false positivity/negativity, sensitivity/specifity, surgery types and distribution of postoperative resultswith regard to diagnoses along with those of malignant/benign masses with regard to quadrants determined.
Results: Diagnostic malignancy power of mammographic BIRADS classification was 87.3%. However, the valuewas 75% in the core biopsy group. Sensitivity and specifity following comparison of FNAB and postoperativepathology results of those receiving surgery were 85.4% and 92.9% while they were 93.5% and 100% in the corebiopsy group. Diagnostic malignancy power, calculated by determining AUC in ROC analysis, of FNAB was89.1% while that of core biopsy was 96.7%.
Conclusions: It was shown that core biopsy is superior to FNAB interms of sensitivity, specificity and accurate histopathological classification. However; quick, cheap and basicdiagnosis by means of FNAB should not be ignored. Sensitivity of FNAB is rather high in experienced handsand furthermore it would be expected to be lower than with core biopsy.