, the observational study suggests that while more information can be collected using 3D mammography, its use only slightly decreases the chance of a false-positive result when compared to standard 2D mammography.
False positives are relatively common using 2D mammography. About 12 per cent of 2D-screening mammograms are recalled for more work-up, but only 4.4 per cent of those recalls – or 0.5 per cent of the mammograms overall – result in a cancer diagnosis. Researchers analyzed data from nearly three million screening mammograms performed on more than 900,000 patients between 2005 and 2018 at 126 radiology facilities. The results suggest that more than half of the patients in the study received at least one false-positive recall over 10 years of annual or biennial screening.
But researchers said that false positives for both 3D and 2D screenings were notably higher with annual testing than they were with biennial testing, or testing every other year. For biennial screenings, the cumulative probability of a false-positive recall was 35.7 per cent for tomosynthesis and 38.1 per cent for digital mammography.
Mine was false positive cause tech labelled left and right side wrong. And mistake wasn’t realized till 3rd follow up scan. Manager apologized saying” we fucked up, sorry”.
It's worth a zillion false positives to save even one life. False positives are not the problem. It's articles like this that cause women to delay mammograms.