Objectives: To determine the advantages of digital mammography in early detection of breast carcinoma.
Background: A new full field digital mammograph was installed at St. Elisabeth Oncology Institute in Bratislava 13 months ago. During this period we gained experience using this equipment and compared it to the foreign countries.
Method: Comparison of digital and conventional mammography.
Results: During the period of 13 months 11 799 patients were examined, 5664 with conventional and 6135 with digital mammograph. We diagnosed 98 cases of breast carcinoma (1.6%, p = 0.67) with digital mammography, out of which 17 (17.3%, p = 0.47) were in stage of carcinoma in situ. Using a conventional mammography 68 cases (1.2%) of breast carcinoma were diagnosed, 9 cases (13.2%) as carcinoma in situ. Recall rate differed significantly--for digital mammography it reached 6.9% in comparison to conventional mammography where the recall rate was 9.5%, p < 0.05. Digital mammography seems to be more sensitive in the detection of early stages of breast carcinoma as well as it is selectively advantageous in women with dense breast, perimenopausal women, patients with hormonal replacement therapy.
Conclusion: Digital mammography is the state-of-the-art method of the early stages breast carcinoma detection especially when enhanced with a CAD system. A considerable contribution of digital mammography will find its use in interventional mammodiagnostic methods (Tab. 1, Fig.5, Ref. 7).