Performance of ultrasonography screening for breast cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract Background To investigate the performance of primary ultrasound (P-US) screening for breast cancer, and that of supplemental ultrasound (S-US) screening for breast cancer after negative mammography (MAM). Methods Electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase) were systematically searched to identify relevant studies published between January 2003 and May 2018. Only high-quality or fair-quality studies reporting any of the following performance values for P-US or S-US screening were included: sensitivity, specificity, cancer detected rate (CDR), recall rate (RR), biopsy rate (BR), proportion of invasive cancers among screening-detected cancers (ProIC), and proportion of node-negative cancers among screening-detected invasive cancers (ProNNIC). Results Twenty-three studies were included, including 12 studies in which S-US screening was used after negative MAM and 11 joint screening studies in which both primary MAM (P-MAM) and P-US were used. Meta-analyses revealed that S-US screening could detect 96% [95% confidential intervals (CIs): 82 to 99%] of occult breast cancers missed by MAM and identify 93% (95% CIs: 89 to 96%) of healthy women, with a CDR of 3.0/1000 (95% CIs: 1.8/1000 to 4.6/1000), RR of 8.8% (95% CIs: 5.0 to 13.4%), BR of 3.9% (95% CIs: 2.7 to 5.4%), ProIC of 73.9% (95% CIs: 49.0 to 93.7%), and ProNNIC of 70.9% (95% CIs: 46.0 to 91.6%). Compared with P-MAM screening, P-US screening led to the recall of significantly more women with positive screening results [1.5% (95% CIs:0.6 to 2.3%), P = 0.001] and detected significantly more invasive cancers [16.3% (95% CIs: 10.6 to 22.1%), P