Diagnostic Accuracy of ultrasound for Post-surgical Surveillance in Patients with Breast Cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most common cancers among the women population all over the world. It is also the one of the leading causes of death among that population. Advances in early diagnosis and BC treatment, a combination of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, in the past decades have resulted in prolonged survival in patients with BC. However, the major problem for the BC management is still its local-regional recurrence and distant metastasis in BC patients who have previously undergone surgery. It has been reported that early detection of its recurrence can not only help to control the disease and its treatment, but also can help to improve the survival for BC patients after surgery. With excellent survival outcomes, there is a growing number of patients entering surveillance. Routine surveillance after a diagnosis of breast cancer involves annual clinical review along with breast imaging. Australian Clinical Practice Guidelines recommend the use of annual mammography as primary method of radiological surveillance, and to include breast ultrasound (US) if indicated, in addition to a clinical examination schedule. The indication for US applies to women under the age of 35, women with dense breasts, or women with mammographically occult primary breast cancer. Imaging surveillance after breast cancer is a valuable tool to detect recurrence in women in absence of clinical suspicion, leading to better outcomes associated with early detection of recurrence. There are a number of imaging modalities available for the detection of breast cancer recurrence, with mammography being the primary method selected by several international guidelines. Breast ultrasound, which is used in high-resource settings to supplement mammography in certain clinical sce