Published in:
01-10-2015 | Brief report
Performance of digital screening mammography in a population-based cohort of black and white women
Published in: Cancer Causes & Control | Issue 10/2015
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Purpose
There is scarce information on whether digital screening mammography performance differs between black and white women.
Methods
We examined 256,470 digital screening mammograms performed from 2005 to 2010 among 31,654 black and 133,152 white Carolina Mammography Registry participants aged ≥40 years. We compared recall rate, sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value (PPV1) between black and white women, adjusting for potential confounders using random effects logistic regression.
Results
Breast cancer was diagnosed in 276 black and 1,095 white women. Recall rates were similar for blacks and whites (8.6 vs. 8.5 %), as were sensitivity (83.7 vs. 82.4 %), specificity (91.8 vs. 91.9 %), and PPV1 (4.8 vs. 5.3 %) (all p values >0.05). Stratified and adjusted models showed similar results. Despite comparable mammography performance, tumors diagnosed in black women were more commonly poorly differentiated and hormone receptor negative.
Conclusion
Equivalent performance of digital screening mammography by race suggests that efforts to understand tumor disparities should focus on etiologic factors that influence tumor biology.