[Diseases of the female breast: screening, mammography, ultrasound]

Now as before mammography represents the most important imaging technique when searching for breast cancer. In more than 90% of all cases this technique permits to identify a cancer, often a long time before any clinical findings. However, this method has its limits, especially in younger women with stimulated breast parenchyma or mastosis. In these cases sonography is the adequate supplementary examination technique. Ultrasound allows for more precise evaluation of nodular structures which by mammography alone are difficult to identify or not at all. Guided punctures and histological investigation of tissues offer higher degrees of diagnostic security. It is the aim of all screening programs to find smaller manifestations of a malignoma, if not their preinvasive stage, since prognosis is by far better than in tumors found by clinical manifestation only.