Diagnostic Imaging (12/12) reported that research suggests that “digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) in cancer screening significantly decreases recall rate (RR) and finds more cancers than 2D mammography.” The findings were published in Radiology. 

MedPage Today (12/11, Bankhead) reports on research that highlights the importance of early treatment in breast cancer. According to MedPage, “The survival odds for women with early breast cancer declined by almost 10% for every 30-day delay in surgery beyond the first 30 days after diagnosis.” The analysis, published in JAMA Oncology, used data from two large-scale databases: NCI’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results and the National Cancer Data Base. 

The Washington Post (12/11, Bernstein) reports on a study that finds that, among “37,207 women who were diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer between 2000 and 2004,” the women who had “breast-conserving surgery plus radiation had a 10-year survival rate of 76.8 percent,” compared to a 59.7 percent survival rate for “women who had mastectomies.” Lead author Sabine Siesling concluded, “If it’s medically feasible and it’s the choice of the patient, then the patient has a better prognosis,” for lumpectomy and radiation.

Aunt Minnie (12/8, Yee) reports, in continuing coverage, that “women with a history of a false-positive screening mammogram have a nearly 40% increased risk of breast cancer for at least a decade afterward,” a study published online Dec. 2 in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention suggests. Researchers arrived at that conclusion after examining data on some “2.2 million screening mammograms performed in 1.3 million women.”