Women with dense breasts who get extra screening beyond a mammogram may have another good option. A large U.S. study found that automated breast ultrasound, a machine-based scan, was associated with fewer abnormal results and far fewer recommendations for short-term follow-up than handheld ultrasound, with no apparent difference in how often cancers were found.
The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, analyzed 25,328 screening ultrasound exams in 21,446 women with dense breasts from 2017 to 2020. It was published online in July and appears in the journal's October issue. The study was observational, meaning it compared outcomes in real-world practice rather than randomly assigning women to one test or the other.
