Role of breast ultrasonography in predicting accurate tumor dimensions in correlation with histopathology and its impact on staging of breast carcinoma.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Estimation of the preoperative size of a breast tumor is of primary importance in deciding the treatment modality. Hence, clinical examination of the lump aided by the imaging is necessary. Our study is instrumental in correlating the size of breast tumor by high-resolution ultrasonography (USG) with the morphological size and also in comparing clinical staging of breast carcinoma against the gold standard pathological staging.

METHODS: It is a cross-sectional study of correlating the size of tumor on USG with the morphological size of biopsy proven invasive ductal carcinoma when received after excision. The size of the tumor was measured grossly and was compared with the USG measurements and palpatory findings.

RESULTS: Seventy percent of cases had good correlation between the USG and morphological size. In 50% of cases, the size on physical examination corroborated with the USG findings and only in 40% of the cases size on physical examination matched with morphological findings. In 65% of cases, the clinical staging of the breast carcinoma matched with the pathological staging. Our study reflected that USG promised to be the most useful radiological tool in predicting the accurate preoperative size of the tumor.

INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSION: We observed that USG has proved to be a very useful conjunct to clinical examination as only palpation was not found to be very accurate in predicting the actual tumor size. It proved to be safer and cheaper and effectively instrumental in meting out an effective management at pre- and postoperative level to the patient.