What to do about occult breast lesions

Early detection, early diagnosis and early treatment of breast cancer are the decisive factors to improve the survival rate and reduce the mortality rate of breast cancer, and early diagnosis is the most important clinical significance, especially when the lesions are not yet palpable, which can greatly improve the prognosis, and most of them can even reach the level of cure. With the continuous progress of diagnostic imaging technology, especially the popularity of digital mammography and as the most important means of breast cancer screening, more and more clinically inaccessible nodules or calcified foci (occult breast lesions) are detected. It is well known that for clinically palpable breast lesions, surgical biopsy or puncture biopsy is usually performed, but for suspicious malignant calcifications on mammograms that are not palpable, it is often impossible to provide accurate localization for surgery or biopsy due to the lack of exact reference markers in the breast. Therefore, many breast lesions require surgical excisional biopsy or puncture biopsy after precise localization under the guidance of medical imaging technology to achieve pathological diagnosis. In clinical practice, some doctors are unable to perform precise surgical excision directly or blindly expand the scope of surgical excision to ensure clean excision, which eventually directly affects the postoperative breast appearance and causes great dissatisfaction among patients; in addition, some doctors adopt the attitude of allowing patients to follow up because the lesions are small and they are worried that the excision is not complete. This practice is an important reason for missing the diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer, which eventually causes some early-stage cancers to develop further and even spread and metastasize. This technique calculates the location of the suspected lesion by mammography of the breast, and then punctures the location determined by the mammography using a breast localization needle from MD, USA, and after confirming that the tip of the needle enters the lesion area, releases the wire with snap-lock function, thus achieving precise preoperative localization of the lesion area. After localization, a cosmetic incision was made under local anesthesia, and the suspected calcified area was accurately excised according to the position of the wire. Because the wire is metallic and has barbs, it is easy to find during surgery, reducing unnecessary breast damage and surgical blindness, and making the scope of excision more accurate. Intraoperative mammography of the specimen avoids problems such as missed excision and false negative puncture biopsy.  Mammography with wire breast localization and wire-guided excision of breast lesions reduces the extent of surgical excision, improves the rate of lesion excision and the accuracy of early breast cancer diagnosis, and can achieve the ideal state of “treating the untreated” that doctors pursue, which is a positioning method worth advocating and promoting.  Guidelines for mammography screening for general population 1. 20-39 years old, mammography screening should be performed only for high-risk group.  2.At the age of 40-49, mammography screening should be performed once a year.  3.Age 50-69, 1 mammogram every 1-2 years.  4.At the age of 70 or above, 1 mammogram every 2 years.  1.No lump is found in the breast, but mammography reveals a suspicious microcalcified lesion with BI-RADS grade ≥4.  2.No lump was found in the breast, and mammography revealed other types of lesions with BI-RADS ≥ grade 4 and could not be accurately localized by ultrasound.