Preoperative breast cancer imaging modalities and \u201cgross examination\u201d demonstrated a high rate of inconsistency between \u201cradiological and pathological stages\u201d of the disease in a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan, according to results from a recent study.<\/p>\n
Berkha Rani, MD, of Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital, and colleagues conducted the study and presented their findings as an abstract during the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) 2026 Annual Conference.<\/p>\n
Dr. Rani emphasized that the \u201cmultimodal approach\u201d of MRI, ultrasound, and mammography imaging is an \u201cessential\u201d part of preoperative clinical staging in breast cancer care, as it influences surgical and therapeutic decision-making.<\/p>\n
She further explained that \u201cunderestimation of tumor size may lead to close or positive surgical margins, whereas overestimation may preclude patients from receiving breast-conserving therapy\u201d and underscored the importance of macroscopic and intraoperative gross examination as key methods of estimating tumor size, focality, and margin status.<\/p>\n
Eligibility criteria for patient participation in the study included having a \u201cconfirmed diagnosis of breast cancer\u201d and undergoing \u201cupfront modified radical mastectomy along with axillary node dissection.\u201d A total of 160 female patients with breast cancer between the ages of 20 and 80 years were selected for inclusion.<\/p>\n
The investigators highlighted that \u201cthe demographic and clinic pathological findings of all the patients were reported in standardized pre-designed forms\u201d and that \u201cstage concordance was defined as cases where the radiological and pathological staging matched.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eligible participants underwent \u201cin-house surgical procedures\u201d as part of the study. Dr. Rani and her colleagues showed that \u201cradiologic imaging overestimated the stage in 75 cases (46.6%) and underestimated it in 26 cases (16.1%).\u201d The results also demonstrated a \u201cweak\u201d (r=0.383) but statistically significant correlation (P=0.001) between radiologic and pathologic staging.<\/p>\n
In reflecting on the results, the investigators highlighted that \u201cmammogram and MRI tended to overestimate size for all tumor types,\u201d whereas ultrasound imaging \u201ctended to underestimate tumor size.\u201d In contrast, pathologic examination \u201ctended to overestimate tumor size.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Rani and her colleagues concluded that \u201cthe high odds of discordance\u201d observed in preoperative breast cancer staging through the observed imaging modalities \u201care therefore important to plan for treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Preoperative breast cancer imaging modalities and \u201cgross examination\u201d demonstrated a high rate of inconsistency between \u201cradiological and pathological…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":371949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[134,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-371948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/371949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}