Advantages and disadvantages of breast ultrasound
Advantage:
1 Ultrasound examination is painless to the subject and has no radiation damage. It can be repeated repeatedly in a short period of time. It is suitable for any age and any physiological period of women, including pregnancy and lactation;
2 Before the examination, the subject usually does not need special preparations, the operation is relatively simple, and there is no blind spot for examination. For the parts that cannot be seen by mammography, such as breast edges, dysplastic small breasts or chest wall masses, ultrasound can display them. ;
3 Ultrasound has a good resolution of soft tissue, can clearly display the structure of each layer of the breast and chest wall, can determine the anatomical location and level of the lesion, identify breast masses and chest wall masses, and find small masses of several millimeters;
4 Determine the physical properties of the mass (cystic, solid, or mixed cystic and solid);
5 According to the sonographic appearance, combined with the characteristics of blood flow, the benign and malignant tumor can be inferred, and the presence or absence of local and distant metastasis can be found;
6 Perform puncture, biopsy and treatment under ultrasound guidance;
Disadvantages:
1 Although ultrasound is very sensitive to calcifications in hypoechoic masses, when there is no mass or the image of the mass is not obvious, it is difficult for ultrasound to detect tiny calcifications and burr-like changes that are easily found by mammography;
2. Both benign and malignant breast solid masses are more common with hypoechoic, and most of the tumors less than 10mm lack specificity in their sonographic images, and the blood flow signal is not obvious. Ultrasound diagnosis of benign and malignant small masses is still difficult. Nodular hypoechoic nodular fat in glandular or subcutaneous fat, sometimes difficult to differentiate from lesions;
3 For parasternal lymph node metastasis, it is difficult to display due to the occlusion of the sternum and ribs;
4. Due to the heterogeneity of the gland structure and the relatively large area of breast examination, it is easy to miss the diagnosis of small lesions. The examiner must be careful, pay attention to the patient's chief complaint and clinical palpation, and try to reduce the missed diagnosis as much as possible;
5 The frequency of ultrasound instruments and probes directly affects the image quality and the display of lesions, and the examiner's understanding of breast disease-related knowledge, operational skills, and thinking analysis ability have a greater impact on the accuracy of diagnosis;
