Mammography-guided stereotactic fine-needle aspiration cytology of nonpalpable breast lesions: prospective comparison with surgical biopsy results

We assessed the usefulness of fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) in evaluating nonpalpable breast abnormalities by prospectively performing stereotactic mammography-guided FNAC on 100 women undergoing surgical excisional biopsy. Mammographic and cytologic diagnoses, on a scale of 1 (benign) to 4 (malignant), were assigned for each case and compared with the surgical pathologic diagnosis. Sensitivity and specificity were examined at different diagnostic cutoff points for regarding a mammographic or cytologic diagnosis as positive or negative. Of the 100 breast biopsy specimens, 70 were benign and 30 were malignant. For both mammography and FNAC, the optimal diagnostic cutoff point was between diagnosis 2 (mammography, probably benign; cytology, atypical) and 3 (mammography and cytology both suspicious for malignancy). At this cutoff point, FNAC had a sensitivity of 0.77 and specificity of 1.00, vs 0.73 sensitivity and 0.79 specificity for mammography. Pearson coefficient analysis revealed significant correlations between both mammographic and FNAC diagnoses and surgical pathology (p less than .001 for both). Our results suggest that use of mammography-guided FNAC may reduce the number of breast biopsies performed for benign lesions.