New Study Led by an Advocate Lutheran General Hospital Physian Shows the Importance of 3D Mammography

A study recently published in Academic Radiology aimed to determine whether 3D mammograms gave physicians distinctly better information to make breast cancer diagnoses than 2D mammograms. The study was led by Dr. Nila H. Alsheik, a diagnostic radiologist at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Il.

Dr. Alsheik and her team used a sample size of approximately 325,00 mammograms from two major health systems. The mammograms studied were from patients who ranged in age from 40-79, with both average and elevated lifetime risk of developing breast cancer. Both health systems receive referrals from large geographically, ethnically, socioeconomically and racially diverse populations. Approximately 60 percent of the mammograms in their sample were 3D; about 40 percent were 2D.

Dr. Alsheik's team studied multiple benchmarks including cancer and invasive cancer detection rates, specificity, tumor grade, size, and stage of tumor at diagnosis and nodal status. Dr. Alsheik and team found significant improvements in patient outcomes with 3D screening mammography versus 2D mammography including:

• Decreased need for patient call backs to obtain additional images after the original screening mammogram; an 8.83 percent recall rate with 3D mammography versus 10.98 percent with 2D mammography

• Decreased need for patient call backs to check an abnormality which turned out to be nothing; a "false alarm"

• Decreased false positives with 3D mammography, beneficial as research has shown that due to the anxiety they create, false positives can lead women to delay or avoid future screenings

• 3D mammography helped physicians find smaller, earlier stage cancers, which are easier to treat and would have been missed on 2D mammograms

• 22 percent increased cancer detection rate with 3D mammography

• patients who received 3D screening mammograms that indicated cancer were also likely to have a biopsy and final diagnosis within a shorter time frame than with 2D mammography

"These findings persisted across all age groups, races, breast densities, and across both health systems," said Dr. Alsheik. "These findings were most pronounced in facilities performing predominantly 3D screening mammography, such as those at Advocate Health Care.

Advocate Lutheran was one of the first institutions in the country to perform 3D mammography and nearly 100 percent of patients at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital now receive 3D screening mammograms. 3D mammography technology is available at all Advocate sites and approximately sixty-five percent of patients systemwide receive 3D mammography.