Concordance between core needle biopsy and surgical excision specimen in the diagnosis of malignancy and benignity for patients with breast tumours

Abstract

Core Needle Biopsy (CNB) has been widely used as a diagnostic tool for breast tumors. However, this technique involves tissue sampling as opposed to complete surgical lesion excision, introducing the possibility of underestimation of disease. The purpose of this study was to assess the reliability of CNB in breast tumors. This was a retrospective cross-sectional study from January 2023 to July 2023. All included patients underwent Core Needle Biopsy (CNB) and subsequent Surgical Excision (SE) of a breast tumor. One hundred fifty patients were assessed. All patients were female. The median age for malignancies was 45 years and 31 years for benign tumors. Concordance regarding the tumor type was globally moderate (k= 0.67; p<0,001) with a rate of 97.6% for CNB-diagnosed malignant tumors and 62.5% for CNB-diagnosed benign tumors. Concordance for histological types was perfect for CNB-diagnosed ILC (rate= 100%; k= 1; p<0,001) and almost perfect for IDC (rate= 96.7%; k= 0.94; p<0,001). The concordance between Core Needle Biopsy (CNB) and surgical excision specimen in the diagnosis of malignancy and benignity of breast tumors is almost perfect for CNB-diagnosed malignancies and moderate for benign tumors.