Through 8 years of follow-up, our findings continue to indicate that lumpectomy plus radiation is more beneficial than lumpectomy alone for women with localized, mammographically detected DCIS. When evaluated according to the mammographic characteristics of their DCIS, all groups benefited from radiation.

Breast irradiation after lumpectomy is more appropriate than lumpectomy alone for women with localized ductal carcinoma in situ.

The introduction of computer-aided detection into this practice was not associated with statistically significant changes in recall and breast cancer detection rates, both for the entire group of radiologists and for the subset of radiologists who interpreted high volumes of mammograms.

Purpose To compare radiologists’ performance during interpretation of screening mammograms in the clinic to their performance when reading the same examinations in a retrospective laboratory study. Materials and Methods This study was conducted under an Institutional Review Board approved HIPAA compliant protocol where informed consent was waived. Nine experienced radiologists rated an enriched set of examinations that they personally had read in the clinic (“reader-specific”) mixed with an enriched “common” set of examinations that none of the participants had read in the clinic, using a screening BI-RADS rating scale. The original clinical recommendations to recall the women for a diagnostic workup, or not, for both reader-specific and common sets were compared with their recommendations during the retrospective experiment. The results are presented in terms of reader-specific and group averaged “sensitivity” and “specificity” levels and the dispersion (spread) of reader-specific performance estimates. Results On average radiologists performed significantly better in the clinic as compared with their performance in the laboratory (p=0.035). Inter reader dispersion of the computed performance levels was significantly lower during the clinical interpretations (p<0.01). Conclusion Retrospective laboratory experiments may not represent well either expected performance levels or inter- reader variability during clinical interpretations of the same set of examinations in the clinical environment.

Arterial occlusive disease at the level of the femoral bifurcation mostly occurs in combination with inflow and/or outflow lesions. Surgical endarterectomy of the femoral bifurcation is a well‐proven low‐risk and easy surgical intervention with known durable success, while, although proven to be safe, evidence is lacking about the durability of the endovascular approach. Based on the evidence at hand, the surgical approach should be recommended for the vast majority of patients and the endovascular approach should only be indicated as the first strategy in selected cases presenting with factors that might compromise the outcome of surgery in the groin. If feasible, the hybrid approach with endarterectomy at the level of the bifurcation and endovascular repair of the inflow and outflow lesions is preferred in patients with multilevel disease. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

No abstract

Core needle biopsy (CNB) is used to sample both mammographically and ultrasound detected breast lesions. A diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) by CNB does not ensure the absence of invasive cancer upon surgical excision and as a result an upstaged patient may need to undergo additional surgery for axillary nodal evaluation. This study evaluates the accuracy of CNB in excluding invasive disease and the preoperative features that predict upstaging of DCIS to invasive breast cancer. Two hundred fifty-four patients over an 8-year period from 1994 to 2002 with a diagnosis of DCIS alone by CNB were retrospectively reviewed. Underestimation of invasive cancer by CNB was determined. Radiographic, pathologic, and surgical features of the cohort were compared using univariate and multivariate analysis. The mean age was 55 years (range 27-84) and mean follow-up was 25 months with one patient unavailable for follow-up. There were a total of six patient deaths, all of which were not disease-specific. A total of 21 out of 254 patients (8%) with DCIS by CNB were upstaged to invasive cancer following surgical excision. There was a significant inverse relationship between the number of core biopsies and the incidence of upstaging (p < 0.006) in that patients with fewer core samples were more likely to be upstaged at surgical pathology. No relationship was noted between the size of the core samples and the likelihood of upstaging (p > 0.4). Of 21 patients with invasion, all but two had comedonecrosis by CNB. Comedonecrosis by CNB significantly increased the likelihood of upstaging (p < 0.001). Of the 21 patients who were upstaged, 12 required subsequent surgery for nodal evaluation while nine had sentinel node biopsy at initial operation. Finally, upstaged patients were significantly more likely to have a positive margin (p < 0.008). Ductal carcinoma in situ with comedonecrosis on CNB can help to predict the possibility of invasion. Increasing the number of core biopsies reduced the likelihood of sampling error.

Our results show that adjusting tissue thickness before estimating tissue composition improved the performance of our estimation procedure in reproducing the tissue composition values determined by radiologists.