Assessment of breast cancer size: sonographic and pathologic correlation.

Purpose: Accurate presurgical assessment of tumor size in breast cancer is important for choosing appropriate treatment. We retrospectively compared presurgical sonographic measurements of tumor size with postsurgical measurements of size and other variables.

Methods: In 174 cases, tumor size was measured by sonography before surgery, and those measurements were compared with values obtained by histopathologic examination of the specimens. The histologic type and grade, the number of lesions, and the presence of an extensive intraductal component also were considered in the intramodal correlations of tumor size.

Results: Sonographic measurements of tumor size correlated well with size measured after surgery (r = 0.72; 95% confidence interval, 0.64-0.78). The correlation was higher for lesions of 20 mm or less in their longest diameter than for larger lesions. The intramodal size correlation was lower for tumors with an extensive intraductal component than for tumors without an extensive intraductal component. The sonographic versus pathologic correlation of tumor size was less accurate when several lesions were present.

Conclusions: Sonography is useful for presurgical assessment of tumor size in patients with breast cancer, especially for single lesions of 20 mm or less and without an extensive intraductal component.