Diagnosis of breast cancer was delayed in 9% of patients in a recent study because physicians wrongly ascribed a benign status to a palpable mass, according to a report in the Archives of Internal Medicine for June 24.
The primary reason for delay, according to Drs. William H. Goodson III and Dan H. Moore of the California Pacific Medical Research Institute, was that physicians failed to perform a biopsy.
Instead, they based their diagnosis on clinical breast examination or mammogram results or both. Other factors included inadequate performance of fine needle aspiration biopsy and pathology reports that mistakenly identified a biopsy as benign.
A partial solution, according to the investigators, is to have physicians who are competent in the technique perform tissue sampling of all palpable masses.
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