COLOR DOPPLER FLOW DATA OF CARCINOMAS OF THE BREAST

The recent development of high-quality colour Doppler instruments allo ws flow detection in small vessels below the resolution of B-mode imag ing. Therefore, Doppler is now frequently used for flow detection in t umours. For breast examinations, CW Doppler has been in use for many y ears, which allows a sufficient definition of diagnostic criteria. Nev ertheless, it is surprising that new studies using colour Doppler ty t o define different diagnostic criteria. To characterise the vascularit y of breast lesions by colour Doppler we investigated 127 symptomatic patients. In 54 carcinomas the average flow velocity was 32 cm/s and 1 2.6 cm/s in 73 benign conditions (p > 0.0001). Total tumour vascularis ation was characterised by a new parameter: the sum of all flow veloci ties in all tumour vessels. In carcinomas the mean total flow as 197.9 cm/s, and 52.7 cm/s in benign pathologies (p>0.0001). Mean RI (resist ance index) and PI (pulsatility index) were calculated to describe the flow profiles. The wide variation did not allow for a differentiation between benign and malignant lesions.