Contrast-enhanced mammography for surveillance in women with a personal history of breast cancer

Abstract Purpose Women with a personal history of breast cancer have an increased risk of subsequent breast malignancy and may benefit from more sensitive surveillance than conventional mammography (MG). We previously reported outcomes for first surveillance episode using contrast-enhanced mammography (CEM), demonstrating higher sensitivity and comparable specificity to MG. We now report CEM performance for subsequent surveillance. Methods A retrospective study of 1,190 women in an Australian hospital setting undergoing annual surveillance following initial surveillance CEM between June 2016 and December 2022. Outcome measures were recall rate, cancer detection rate, contribution of contrast to recalls, false positive rate, interval cancer rate and characteristics of surveillance detected and interval cancers. Results 2,592 incident surveillance episodes were analysed, of which 93% involved contrast-based imaging. Of 116 (4.5%) recall episodes, 40/116 (34%) recalls were malignant (27 invasive; 13 ductal carcinoma in situ), totalling 15.4 cancers per 1000 surveillance episodes. 55/116 (47%) recalls were contrast-directed including 17/40 (43%) true positive recalls. Tumour features were similar for contrast-directed recalls and other diagnoses. 8/9 (89%) of contrast-directed invasive recalls were Grade 2–3, and 5/9 (56%) were triple negative breast cancers. There were two symptomatic interval cancers (0.8 per 1000 surveillance episodes, program sensitivity 96%). Conclusion Routine use of CEM in surveillance of women with PHBC led to an increase in the detection of clinically significant malignant lesions, with a low interval cancer rate compared to previous published series. Compared to mammographic surveillance, contrast-enhanced mammography increases the sensitivity of surveillance programs for women with PHBC.