Nonpalpable breast lesions: pathologic correlation of ultrasonographically guided fine-needle aspiration biopsy

To evaluate the usefulness of ultrasonographically guided fine-needle aspiration biopsy in routine clinical use, we evaluated retrospectively all of the 781 nonpalpable breast lesions operated on in the Oulu University Hospital during the period 1986 to 1993. There were 86 patients with 90 nonpalpable breast lesions, of which samples were taken by ultrasonographically guided fine-needle aspiration biopsy. Open wire-guided surgical biopsy was obtained in all cases for a histologic diagnosis. Two false-negative results and one insufficient cytologic sample occurred in the 26 malignancies and one false-positive result and two insufficient cytologic samples were found in the 73 benign breast lesions, giving sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and overall diagnostic accuracy values of 84%, 93%, 94%, 95%, and 90%, respectively. The calculations include the insufficient samples. We conclude that ultrasonographically guided fine-needle aspiration biopsy is a method comparable to mammographic and stereotactic fine-needle aspiration biopsy methods.