Comparison of Thallium-201 Scan and Tc-99m Sestamibi Scan in the Differential Diagnosis of Breast Mass

Cho, Ihn Ho; Won, Kyu Jang; Lee, Hyung Woo; Lee, Soo Jung

Abstract

PURPOSE: We performed this study to compare T1-201 and Tc-99m MIBI scans for the differentiation of malignant from benign breast mass.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Thirty-eight female patients underwent T1-201 breast scan and thirty-two of them also underwent Tc-99m MIBI scan of the breast. After intravenous injection of 74-111 MBq of T1-201, early (10 minutes) and delayed (3 hours) images were obtained. Then, 555-740 MBq of Tc-99m MIBI was injected and images after 30 minutes were obtained. We compared T1-201 and Tc-99m MIBI scans with pathologic
RESULTS
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RESULTS
Twenty-three patients were confirmed to have infiltrating duct carcinoma and fifteen patients to have benign breast mass by excisonal biopsy. The sensitivity of early and delayed T1-201 scan and Tc-99m MIBI scan in the detection of malignant breast lesion were 100% (23/23), 82% (18/22), and 90% (18/20), respectively. The specificity of early T1-201 scan was significantly higher than that of delayed T1-201 scan (p<0.05). The specificity of early and delayed T1-201 scan and Tc-99m MIBI scan were 73% (11/15), 73% (11/15) and 83% (10/12), respectively (p:not significant). Three patients out of nine with fibroadenoma and one patient with atypical duct hyperplasia were false positive in both early and delayed T1-201 scans. The size of fibroadenoma with false positvie in early and delayed T1-201 scan (4 cases) was larger than that of 11 fibradenoma with true negative scan (p<0.01). Metastatic axillary lymph node involvement was present in fifteen patients. The sensitive to detect metastatic nodes was 38% (5/13) for early T1-201 images, 15% (2/13) for delayed T1-201 images, 58% (7/12) for Tc-99m MIBI planar images and 67% (4/6) for Tc-99m MIBI SPECT. The sensitive of Tc-99m MIBI planar or SPECT was significantly higher than that of delayed T1-201 images (p<0.05).
CONCLUSION
Early T1-201 and Tc-99m MIBI scan are useful noninvasive methods to differentiate malignant form benign mass of breast. Tc-99m MIBI scan was sensitive in detecting axillary lymph node metastasis in patients with brease cancer.