Breast cancer tumor growth estimated through mammography screening data

Abstract

Introduction Knowledge of tumor growth is important in the planning and evaluation of screening programs, clinical trials, and epidemiological studies. Studies of tumor growth rates in humans are usually based on small and selected samples. In the present study based on the Norwegian Breast Cancer Screening Program, tumor growth was estimated from a large population using a new estimating procedure/model.

Effect of interval between serum draw and follow-up period on relative risk of cancer incidence with respect to 25-hydroxyvitamin D level; implications for meta-analyses and setting vitamin D guidelines

“…A more recent paper, based on mammography screening, estimated that tumors increase from 1.5 cm diameter to 4.0 cm in 1.5 years. 20 Backtracking from 2 cm to 2 mm, we find that such growth would take about 1.7 years according to the Hart et al value. Thus, there appears to be about a 1-to-2-year window to go from start of angiogenesis to detection of breast cancer.…”

Recurrence of Invasive Micropapillary Carcinoma of the Breast with Different Ultrasound Features according to Lesion Site: Case Report

“…The geometric mean of the doubling time for papillotubular carcinoma was the longest, that for the solidtubular carcinoma was the shortest, and that for scirrhous carcinoma was intermediate. More rapidly growing tumors were more malignant, suggesting that cells of rapidly growing tumors may be more active in cell proliferation, and may have a higher potential to metastasize [9,15].…”

Estimates of Breast Cancer Growth Rate From Mammograms and Its Relation to Tumour Characteristics

“…Furthermore, the growth rate of tumours is an important variable input in many models dealing with the planning and evaluation of screening programmes (20) , thus, a reliable tD is necessary to estimate benefits and harms from related terms such as length bias and lead time (22,23) . Because of the wide span of tD, the very fast growing cancers will only rarely be observed with the intervals used in current breast cancer screening programmes and the very slow growing cancers could be subjected to overdiagnosis, resulting in overtreatment.…”

“…One problem with the modelled Gompertzian function was that no upper limit constraint (parameter a) was set, representing a bounded growth. Future work will involve a generalized logistic function with a upper limit constraint describing the average maximum achievable tumour volume (3,19,20) .…”