Mammography, with 3D screening, found 34% of additional breast cancers

It allows to identify more than 30% of tumors compared to the traditional examination and, in Italy, it is already prevalent in many centers, even if it is not yet the test used to screen more than 50 women. is the new frontier of bad cancer prevention and the latest scientific evidence to add to the many studies done in this area is a Swedish study that looked at 15,000 women for five years.

The publication was published in Lancet Oncology in October, the month of the global campaign to prevent bad cancer. With 52,800 new cases in 2017 alone (Aiom data), bad cancer is the most frequently diagnosed in Italy. Despite the increase in the number of diagnoses, the chances of survival have also improved considerably thanks to screening programs offering free and active mammography for women aged 50 to 69 years.

Tests in which traditional mammographic screening is used today, in which all bad tissue is captured in a single image. Breast tomosynthesis, or mammography in 3D, captures rather different radiological images from different angles, which are reconstructed by a computer to display thin layers of the bad, thus providing more information. The study conducted in Sweden between 2010 and 2015 confirms on a large scale the results of an Italian survey published on radiology.

"Using 3D examination, 34% more bad cancers were detected compared to mammography screening currently used," says Sophia Zackrisson, badociate professor at Lund University. In particular, the examination detected tumors in the denser bads, that is to say those that are more difficult to study and that can hide the small malignant nodules longer. It is currently offered in many centers in Italy, but in free screening programs for women over 50, it is proposed in 3D only in limited case studies, such as Reggio Emilia and Turin. "In the United States, it is already used as a general screening for the female population.

In Italy, it will probably be there in 5 years, "says Pierluigi Rinaldi, medical director of radiology at the Gemelli Irccs Polyclinic Foundation in Rome." Currently, this review is provided for in several study protocols, normally limited to young patients, with a high risk of family history and dense bads. Or, it is sometimes used for second level investigations. Probably in the future, it will be used on the entire female population ".

An opportunity that is carefully evaluated. "The doubts – explains Marco Zappa, director of the National Observatory of Screening (ON) – concern the risks of overdiagnosis. In fact, this method, more sensitive, also leads to the identification of tumors which, although they are, are not necessarily intended to evolve clinically or to harm the body.

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