Abstract
Needle biopsy under ultrasonographic guidance is being used increasingly to provide specimens for pathological diagnosis of breast lesions. The advantage of this technique is that it is less invasive, easy and economical to perform, and does not deform the shape of the breast in comparison with conventional surgical biopsy. We analyzed 127cases of needle biopsy performed for intracystic tumors of the breast, including 10 cases of core needle biopsy (CNB) and 117 cases of vacuum-assisted biopsy (VAB). The pathological diagnosis of the biopsy specimens was malignant in 18, benign in 96 and intermediate in 13. Surgical removal of the tumor was performed in 41 women who underwent needle biopsy. Pathological examination of the surgically resected specimens demonstrated malignancy in 30 intracystic tumors (30/127). In this series, there were no false-positive cases, and the sensitivity was 60%. We conclude that needle biopsy is useful for the diagnosis of malignancy in intracystic tumors of the breast. VAB in particular can provide larger biopsy specimens containing part of the cystic wall of the tumor, allowing greater confidence when diagnosing malignancy.
