(May 13, 2008 - Insidermedicine) Adding an ultrasound exam to a standard mammography test can help boost detection rates of breast cancer, but it also increases the rate of false positive findings, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists makes the following recommendations regarding screening for breast cancer:

•    Women who are aged 40 to 49 should undergo mammography every 1 to 2 years to screen for breast cancer.

•    Women aged 50 and older should undergo mammography every year to screen for breast cancer.

•    If you have certain risk factors for breast cancer, such as a family history of the disease, your doctor may want you to undergo screening more frequently.

Researchers from American Radiology Services, Inc., Johns Hopkins at Green Spring in Lutherville randomly selected nearly 3,000 women who were at high risk for breast cancer to be screened for the condition using mammography alone or using mammography plus ultrasound. The participating women also had dense breast tissue, which can make a diagnosis of breast cancer more difficult.

Overall, 40 women were diagnosed with breast cancer. The detection rate rose from 7.6 cancers detected for every 1,000 women screened with the use of mammography alone to 11.8 cancers detected per 1,000 women using mammography plus ultrasound. On the other hand, the false positive rate – the rate at which women were identified as having breast cancer but were later found not to have the condition – more than doubled: from 4.4% with mammography alone to 10.4% with both screening tools.

Today’s research calls into question whether mammography alone should continue to be used as the standard screening technique for breast cancer. Other imaging tests, including ultrasound and MRI, used alone or in combination, are also showing promise.

For Insidermedicine in Depth, I'm Dr. Susan Sharma.