Breast Papillomas in the Era of Percutaneous Needle Biopsy

Can concurrent core biopsy and fine needle aspiration biopsy improve the false negative rate of sonographically detectable breast lesions?

Background

The aims of this study were to determine the accuracy of concurrent core needle biopsy (CNB) and fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) for breast lesions and to estimate the false-negative rate using the two methods combined.

Methods

Over a seven-year period, 2053 patients with sonographically detectable breast lesions underwent concurrent ultrasound-guided CNB and FNAB. The sonographic and histopathological findings were classified into four categories: benign, indeterminate, suspicious, and malignant. The histopathological findings were compared with the definitive excision pathology results. Patients with benign core biopsies underwent a detailed review to determine the false-negative rate. The correlations between the ultrasonography, FNAB, and CNB were determined.

Results

Eight hundred eighty patients were diagnosed with malignant disease, and of these, 23 (2.5%) diagnoses were found to be false-negative after core biopsy. After an intensive review of discordant FNAB results, the final false-negative rate was reduced to 1.1% (p-value = 0.025). The kappa coefficients for correlations between methods were 0.304 (p-value < 0.0001) for ultrasound and FNAB, 0.254 (p-value < 0.0001) for ultrasound and CNB, and 0.726 (p-value < 0.0001) for FNAB and CNB.

Conclusions

Concurrent CNB and FNAB under ultrasound guidance can provide accurate preoperative diagnosis of breast lesions and provide important information for appropriate treatment. Identification of discordant results using careful radiological-histopathological correlation can reduce the false-negative rate.

Risk factors associated with conversion from nonmalignant to malignant diagnosis after surgical excision of breast papillary lesions

PURPOSE

Management of papillary lesions of the breast identified during preoperative tissue diagnosis remains controversial. This study was designed to analyze the clinical factors associated with under-diagnosis of malignancy in breast papillary lesions.

METHODS

Patients with a preoperative tissue diagnosis of benign or atypical papillary lesions, who received surgical excision between 1991 and 2005, were identified. Age of diagnosis, family history of breast cancer, presentation of nipple discharge, palpable mass, mammogram grading, size of lesion, and final pathological diagnosis were analyzed. Tissue sections were reviewed to confirm the diagnosis of malignancy and reasons of discrepancy.

RESULTS

A total of 205 women with 228 papillary lesions were studied. The median age was 42 (range, 12-83) years. Malignancies were diagnosed after surgery in 21 cases (9.2%). Patients aged 45 years or older and atypical lesions according to fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) or core needle biopsy (CNB) were associated with higher risk for postoperative malignant diagnosis with P values of 0.0008 and < 0.0001, respectively. Pathology review of 19 lesions with malignancy revealed that reasons for preoperative nonmalignant diagnosis were borderline lesions in nine (47.3%), sampling problem in six (31.5%), interpretation error in three (15.7%) and uninterpretable sample in one (5.2%).

CONCLUSIONS

In this cohort, 9.21% of preoperative nonmalignant papillary lesions were converted to malignant diagnosis after surgery. Atypical lesions and patients aged 45 years or older were significant factors associated with such conversion. Surgical excision should be considered for papillary lesions of breast, especially for patients with the identified risk factors.