Across a number of diagnostic performance measures, researchers recently found that the outcomes of diagnostic mammograms—including accuracy—varies in different racial and ethnic groups. 

An analysis of more than 250,000 diagnostic mammograms revealed that the number of invasive cancers detected per 1,000 exams was highest among non-Hispanic white women, at 35.8. In comparison, Asian/Pacific Islander women were found to have 31.6 cancers detected per 1,000 exams, followed by non-Hispanic Black women at 29.5; and Hispanic women at 22.3. 

These figures were reported in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention—a journal of the America Association for Cancer Research—after experts tapped into the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium to investigate the correlation between patients’ race and ethnicity and cancer detection rates. A total of 267,868 diagnostic mammograms that were completed between 2005 and 2017 were included in the research, from which numerous conclusions were drawn. 

Lead author of the study, Sarah J. Nyante, PhD, associate professor of radiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, discussed the findings recently, explaining that there are many known disparities that have been found in previous studies, but that insight into diagnostic mammography processes is still lacking. 

Nyante suggested that disparities present in the screening stage likely carry over into the diagnostic stage as well.