Automated breast ultrasound adds cancer detection in dense breasts but also raises recall rate

Adding automated breast ultrasound (ABUS) to mammography in women with dense breasts increased cancer detection by 2.3 per 1000 screens (95% CI 1.5-3.5) but substantially increased the recall rate to 14.2%, compared to 8.8% for mammography alone, in a Korean screening cohort.

• Retrospective cohort; 23,976 asymptomatic women with dense breasts who had both screening mammography and ABUS.
• The study highlights the trade-off: ABUS-detected cancers were mostly small, node-negative invasive tumors (exact figures not reported in source), but the higher false-positive rate led to additional biopsies.
• Single-institution, retrospective design limits generalizability, and the real-world impact on interval cancers was not assessed.

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