Doppler Indıces Evaluatıon In Malıgnant Breast Lesıons: A Revıew

The incidence of breast malignancy has displayed a rapid rise in recent times. It is one of the most common malignancies found in women. Women should be educated and made aware about self breast examination in order to detect malignancies at an early stage so that the prognosis can be improved. Breast pathologies can be classified into malignant and benign ones on the basis of signs and symptoms and by ultrasonography but can be confirmed on histopathology which remains the gold standard. Breast ultrasonography is the most common non ionizing radiological investigation used to assess breast lesions especially in women with dense or painful breasts. Breast carcinomas appear irregularly shaped hypoechoic lesions with non-circumscribed margins, but these features can rarely be manifested by benign lesions as well. Recent introduction of doppler ultrasound has led to an increase in the sensitivity of detecting breast carcinoma since most of the breast malignancies are hyper vascular and they show high resistivity index on spectral analysis. Angiogenesis in malignant lesions lead to formation of structurally abnormal and tortuous vessels with increased resistive index. Several studies on doppler analysis of breast malignancies have shown Doppler ultrasound to be a safe and effective modality showing acceptable diagnostic accuracy for non-invasive characterization of malignant breast lesions. Therefore, it can be employed as an alternative to histopathology in patients who present with breast lesions.