Abstract

Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in India. It is very important to recognise the palpable breast lump as benign or malignant. The commonly used imaging modality in breast lumps are ultrasonography and mammography. The present study aims to find out the accuracy of sonomammography and mammography by comparing the results with histopathology.

Materials and Methods: A descriptive study was conducted among 75 female patients above 20 years of age with palpable breast lesions and bloody discharge from the nipple. Patients with advanced carcinoma, patients with history of previous breast biopsy and previously treated cases were excluded from the study. Designed as diagnostic test evaluation, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of the variables in differentiation was calculated comparing with histolopathological diagnosis. The features of the tests was analyzed by Cohen’s Kappa for statistical agreement with histopathology.

Results: In this study, the overall sensitivity and specificity of mammography obtained were 92%, and 87% respectively and that of sonomammography obtained were 83%, and 90% respectively for differentiating benign from malignant breast lesions.

Conclusion: This study shows that mammography and ultrasonography are useful in characterization of breast masses. Before going for biopsy, screening with mammography and sonomammography can be highly helpful.

Keywords: Benign, histopathology, malignant, mammography, sonomammography.