Digital mammography better screening tool for some women

Patients are cautioned against postponing an annual mammogram while awaiting a digital machine to arrive at their local screening site.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Oct. 17, 2005.

Washington -- Digital mammography more accurately detected breast cancer among women whose breasts are dense than did standard film mammography, according to findings from a large, multicenter trial sponsored by the National Cancer Institute.

In general, the women who stand to benefit from this technology, which is now available in only about 8% of mammography facilities nationwide, are younger than 50 and premenopausal or perimenopausal.

For women in other categories, a comparison between digital and film mammography showed no difference in detecting breast cancer. The results of the randomized controlled trial of nearly 50,000 women were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine as they were announced at a Sept. 16 meeting of the American College of Radiology Imaging Network in Arlington, Va.

For women, breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. More than 211,000 women in the nation will be found to have invasive breast cancer this year, and about 40,410 will die. Death rates from breast cancer are, however, dropping, and earlier detection is believed to be playing a role.

The findings from the new study were welcomed by many for providing another screening option for women with dense breasts who might not have been well-served by film mammography. The types of lesions found by digital mammography and not by film among these women were the types of cancers that can lead to death, the researchers said. They were invasive cancers without evidence of metastasis to auxiliary lymph nodes at time of diagnosis and medium and high-grade in situ lesions.