Benign breast disease detected after baseline mammogram most apt to become cancer

Reuters Health - 06/10/2020 - The way in which benign breast disease is detected on screening mammography provides useful information on the likelihood of it progressing to cancer, according to a study from Spain.

Benign breast disease (BBD) diagnosed from the second screening onward is associated with a "significantly higher" subsequent risk of breast cancer than BBD diagnosed on the first screening, Dr. Marta Roman of Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute in Barcelona reported October 2 during a virtual presentation to the 12th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC12).

This finding "should be considered when discussing risk-based personalized screening strategies," said Dr. Roman.

In a statement, conference co-chair Dr. Javier Cortes, with Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology, also in Barcelona, said, "The results from this study provide us with useful information that can improve the accuracy of breast cancer risk prediction models so that we can tailor surveillance strategies for patients with this disease."

The study team assessed differences in risk of breast cancer after diagnosis of prevalent BBD detected on the first (baseline) mammography screening or incident BBD detected on subsequent screenings. They had data for 629,087 women who underwent more than 2.3 million screening mammograms between 1995 and 2015 and were followed until 2017.

In adjusted models, compared with women with no BBD, women with incident BBD had a 2.67-fold increased chance of developing breast cancer, which was significantly higher than the increase in women with prevalent BBD (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.87).

In addition, women with proliferative BBD had a 3.28-fold increased risk of breast cancer compared with women with no BBD, while women with non-proliferative BBD had a 1.96-fold increased risk.

The highest risk of subsequent breast cancer was in women with incident, proliferative BBD with atypia, with a 4.35-fold increased risk.

"Clinicians involved in the management of women with BBD could offer targeted surveillance strategies considering, in addition to other factors, if the BBD was found at first or in subsequent screening examinations," study chief Dr. Xavier Castells of Hospital del Mar said in the statement.

By Megan Brooks

SOURCE: https://bit.ly/36pumFU 12th European Breast Cancer Conference, presented October 2, 2020.



Posted on 6 October 202021 October 2020