Stereotactic Directional Vacuum-Assisted Breast Biopsy

Stereotactic directional vacuum-assisted breast biopsy (ST DVAB) is a standard biopsy procedure for suspicious findings on mammograms in Western countries for more than 10 years [1-3], it has replaced the needle localization (NLOC) excisional biopsy for the lesions alike and was reported to feature a high sensitivity, very low delayed false-negative rate (less than 2%)[4,5]. Moreover, it causes less scarring, less psychologic stress to patients and less morbidity compared with needle localization excisional biopsy [6,7]. However, its sensitivity, accuracy has seldom been reported in Asian countries [8] , since most Asian women have different breast parenchyma pattern, different breast cancer prevalence. Therefore, we retrospectively reviewed outcomes of the two groups of patients receiving either ST DVAB or NLOC excisional biopsy, trying to investigate if ST DVAB can be an effective alternative to NLOC excisional biopsy in our country.