Seno touts study on cost of follow-up breast exams

Follow-up diagnostic imaging and biopsy procedures performed on patients with suspicious findings on screening mammography amounted to an annual cost of nearly $8 billion, according to an article being highlighted by optoacoustic imaging firm Seno Medical Instruments and published March 26 in ClinicoEconomics and Outcomes Research.

Seno Chief Medical Officer Dr. Thomas Stavros and researchers from IBM Watson Health reviewed the medical claims for female breast imaging and diagnostic procedures submitted to MarketScan Commercial and Medicare Databases between 2011 and 2015.

Among more than 870,000 patients who underwent screening mammography, 49.4% had a second diagnostic procedure, 20.1% had a third procedure, and 10% had a fourth procedure. The various follow-up exams these patients underwent included diagnostic mammography (53.3% of patients), breast ultrasound (42.4%), and biopsy (10.3%).

On average, the annual total cost was $3.05 billion for diagnostic mammograms (at an average cost of $349 per exam), $920 million for breast ultrasound (average cost of $132), and $3.07 billion for biopsy (average cost of $1,938).

Based on reports from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimating a false-positive breast biopsy rate of approximately 71%, as much as $2.18 billion in biopsy procedures could potentially have been avoided, according to Seno.