Introduction: Women with B5a (non-invasive) preoperative core biopsies upgraded to invasive disease at surgery have a high chance of needing further surgery. The average B5a upgrade rate across UK breast screening programmes is around 20%. Through this Scottish review, we aim to identify factors affecting upgrade rates and ways to improve our performance. Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of 1,252 cases of B5a biopsies from the Scottish Breast Screening Programme between 2004 and 2012. Final surgical pathology was correlated with radiological and biopsy factors. Results: B5a upgrade rates for the units ranged from 19.2 to 29.2%, with average of 23.6%. Mean sizes of invasive tumours were small (3 to 11 mm). Upgrade rate was significantly higher for cases where the main mammographic abnormality was mass, distortion or asymmetry, compared with microcalcification alone (33.2% vs. 21.7%) (P = 0.0004). The upgrade rate was significantly lower with use of large-volume vacuum-assisted biopsy (VAB) devices than 14-gauge core needles (19.9% vs. 26%) (P = 0.013). The upgrade Introduction: MRI is a common method for detecting breast cancer in women at high risk [1,2] These women may instead be diagnosed mammographically or present symptomatically. The aim of this study was to investigate how breast cancer is diagnosed in high-risk women and determine whether there are specific characteristics related to the type of presentation. Methods: A total of 125 high-risk patients with 134 breast cancers (69 BRCA, 65 family history) were managed at the Royal Marsden Hospital from 1994 to 2013. Following ethical approval, data were collected retrospectively for each presentation of breast cancer: method of presentation/diagnosis (MRI, mammography, symptomatic), age at diagnosis, cancer type, grade, size, presence of DCIS, lymphovascular invasion (LVI), nodal status and tumour subtype. Chi-squared and ANOVA analyses determined any association between the parameters, P < 0.05 was significant. Results: Ten breast cancers were MRI detected, 43 mammography detected and 81 symptomatic (mean age 41, 51, and 45 years (P = 0.008); mean size 17, 29, and 34 mm (P = 0.076) respectively).The majority of cancers were high-grade (68%) invasive ductal carcinomas (78%) without LVI (76%). MRIdetected cancers were triple negative in 60% (P = 0.03), node negative in 100% (P = 0.005) with DCIS in 70% (P = 0.007). Mammography-detected cancers were luminal in 77% (P = 0.03), node negative in 77% (P = 0.005), with DCIS in 81% (P = 0.007). Symptomatic cancers were luminal in 54%, triple negative in 41%, node negative in 56% and DCIS positive in 51%. Conclusion: In this high-risk cohort, MRI detects small, triple-negative, node-negative cancers in younger women, while mammography detects larger, luminal, cancers in older women that may be node positive. Introduction: Anisotropy is the directional dependence of the measurement of a property. As breast tissue structure and some breast diseases (DCIS) are anisotropic in structure, we aimed to establish ...
