CLINICAL-ASSESSMENT, MAMMOGRAPHY AND ULTRASONOGRAPHY AS METHODS OF MEASURING THE SIZE OF BREAST-CANCER - A COMPARISON

The size of a breast cancer is used for selection of surgical treatmen t modalities and assessment of nonoperative treatment of the tumour. T o investigate prospectively which method could predict tumour size rel iably, the tumour size was measured in 138 consecutive female patients with palpable breast cancer, using palpation, mammography and ultraso nography. These measurements were correlated with the histological siz e. The correlation coefficients between clinical assessment, mammograp hy, ultrasonography and histological size were 0.71, 0.65 and 0.80 aft er logistic transformation of the data, respectively. Clinical assessm ent overestimates the tumour size, whereas mammography and ultrasonogr aphy slightly underestimate the size. This study demonstrates that ult rasonography appears to be a feasible and the most reliable method for pre-operative assessment of the size of palpable breast carcinomas.