1Department of Surgery, University of Ulsan College of Medicine and Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea. 2Department of Radiology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine and Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea. 3Department of Pathology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine and Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: The early detection of breast cancer by screening mammography is important to reduce breast cancer mortality rate. The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of breast cancer patients detected by screening mammography.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: Surgically treated 1,265 patients at Asan Medical Center from Jul. 1989 to Dec. 1997 were evaluated. Among them, 119 patients (9.4%) were detected by screening mammography. These patients were compared with clinically detected symptomatic breast cancer group.
RESULTS: The characteristics of breast cancer patients detected by screening mammography were as follows: The most common finding of mammography was microcalcifications (62.2%); The less invasive or more conservative minimal and non-destructive surgical treatments such as breast conserving surgery (21.0%), simple mastectomy (8.4%), breast reconstruction (8.4%) were performed more frequently; The median tumor size of invasive cancers was 16 mm; Node-negative cancers (83.2%) were more frequent; The early breast cancer of stage 0 and I was 70.6%; DCIS (29.4%) was highly proportionated; and The 5-year overall (95.8%) and 5-year disease-free survival rate (92.0%) were significantly higher than in clinically detected symptomatic breast cancer patients.
CONCLUSION: The screening mammography was significant for detecting non-palpable, early stage breast cancer.
Ultrasonography was needed as an adjunct for the accurate detection in dense breast or young women. According to early detection, the 5-year survival rate was high.
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