Patient perception of meander-like versus radial breast ultrasound.

Background Radial breast ultrasound scanning (r-US) and commonly used meander-like ultrasound scanning (m-US) have recently been shown to be equally sensitive and specific with regard to the detection of breast malignancies. As patient satisfaction has a strong influence on patient compliance and thus on the quality of health care, we compare here the two US scanning techniques with regard to patient comfort during breast ultrasound (BUS) and analyze whether the patient has a preference for either scanning technique. Materials and Methods Symptomatic and asymptomatic women underwent both m-US and r-US scanning by two different examiners. Patient comfort and preference were assessed using a visual analog scale-based (VAS) questionnaire and were compared using a Mann-Whitney U test. Results Analysis of 422 VAS-based questionnaires showed that perceived comfort with r-US (r-VAS 8 cm, IQR [5.3, 9.1]) was significantly higher compared to m-US (m-VAS 5.6 cm, IQR [5.2, 7.4]) (p < 0.001). 53.8% of patients had no preference, 44.3% of patients clearly preferred r-US, whereas only 1.9% of patients preferred m-US. Conclusion: Patients experience a higher level of comfort with r-US and favor r-US over m-US. As the diagnostic accuracy of r-US has been shown to be comparable to that of m-US and the time required for examination is shorter, a switch from m-US to r-US in routine clinical practice might be beneficial. R-US offers considerable potential to positively affect patient compliance but also to save examination time and thus costs.

Agreement in breast lesion assessment and final BI-RADS classification between radial and meander-like breast ultrasound.

BACKGROUND: This study prospectively investigates the agreement between radial (r-US) and meander-like (m-US) breast ultrasound with regard to lesion location, lesion size, morphological characteristics and final BI-RADS classification of individual breast lesions. METHODS: Each patient of a consecutive, unselected, mixed collective received a dual ultrasound examination. RESULTS: The agreement between r-US and m-US for lesion location ranged from good (lesion to mammilla distance ICC 0.64; lesion to skin distance ICC 0.72) to substantial (clock-face localization κ 0.70). For lesion size the agreement was good (diameter ICC 0.72; volume ICC 0.69), for lesion margin and architectural distortion it was substantial (κ 0.68 and 0.70, respectively). Most importantly, there was a substantial agreement (κ 0.76) in the final BI-RADS classification between r-US and m-US. CONCLUSIONS: Our recent comparison of radial and meander-like breast US revealed that the diagnostic accuracy of the two scanning methods was comparable. In this study, we observe a high degree of agreement between m-US and r-US for the lesion description (location, size, morphology) and final BI-RADS classification. These findings corroborate that r-US is a suitable alternative to m-US in daily clinical practice. Trial registration NCT02358837. Registered January 2015, retrospectively registered https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cond=&term=NCT02358837&cntry=&state=&city=&dist =.

Comparison of radial and meander-like breast ultrasound with respect to diagnostic accuracy and examination time.

PURPOSE: To prospectively compare the diagnostic accuracy of radial breast ultrasound (r-US) to that of conventional meander-like breast ultrasound (m-US), patients of a consecutive, unselected, mixed collective were examined by both scanning methods. METHODS: Out of 1948 dual examinations, 150 revealed suspicious lesions resulting in 168 biopsies taken from 148 patients. Histology confirmed breast cancers in 36 cases. Sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, PPV, and NPV were calculated for r-US and m-US. The examination times were recorded. RESULTS: For m-US and r-US, sensitivity (both 88.9%), specificity (86.4% versus 89.4%), accuracy (86.9% versus 89.3%), PPV (64.0% versus 69.6%), NPV (both 98.3%), false-negative rate (both 5.6%), and rate of cancer missed by one method (both 5.6%) were similar. The mean examination time for r-US (14.8 min) was significantly (p < 0.01) shorter than for m-US (22.6 min). CONCLUSION: Because the diagnostic accuracy of r-US and m-US are comparable, r-US can be considered an alternative to m-US in routine breast US with the added benefit of a significantly shorter examination time.