Sonographic Characterization of breast masses with pathological correlation

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. It is the fifth most common cause of death from cancer in women. Early detection is required to decrease breast cancer related deaths. The effective diagnosis and management of breast lesions involves multidisciplinary approach to their assessment. The precision of the final diagnosis can be greatly increased by radiological imaging and pathological diagnosis, Ultrasonography is an excellent modality, especially in patients with dense breasts and it also helps to characterize a lesion undetected on mammography. Combining both these modalities (mammography and ultrasonography) yield best results. Sonologically diagnosed lesions, were confirmed by FNAC/HPE. The aim of the study is to study the sonographic characteristics of breast lesions in patients with breast lump. All patients clinically diagnosed with a palpable breast lump referred to the department of radiology, were included in the study. Whole-breast sonography, using a high frequency (12-4 mhz) linear probe of both breasts was done in a radial and anti-radial orientation. Data was collected from a sample size of 80 patients. The median age in the study was 38 years. Histopathology/FNAC was the gold standard in our study. All 80 cases were subjected to histopathological/FNAC examination for final diagnosis. Fibroadenoma was the commonest benign lesion (63.8%). Breast carcinoma was seen in 36.2% of patients. Most of the tumors found in our study were invasive ductal carcinomas (51.7%).