Breast Cancer Awareness Month: BreastScreen NSW (South Eastern Sydney Illawarra) Assessment Clinics and GP Communication

BreastScreen NSW may recall 1 in 20 patients to an assessment clinic for diagnostic testing following their screening mammogram, and the results are shared with the patient’s GP via an Assessment Outcome Report.

There are four possible outcomes after assessment:

• Return to Routine Screening if no abnormality is found
• Early Review if results are benign but some concern remains, and progress imaging is advised to assess for any interval change
• Treatment when a malignant lesion, whether invasive or non- invasive is diagnosed
• Diagnostic Open Biopsy when a high-risk lesion is diagnosed and any associated malignancy needs to be excluded, or when the assessment result is equivocal and a surgical biopsy is recommended for further assessment. It may also be recommended when the area of concern is not safely accessible for a core biopsy.

In some cases, especially when the result of a core biopsy at BreastScreen was benign, the patient may decline a diagnostic open biopsy.

In such cases however, the assessing radiologist would have concluded that the imaging and core biopsy results were discordant and further assessment was recommended of the area of concern.

In such situations, the input from GPs in guiding their patients to complete the investigations and management as recommended by BreastScreen is invaluable in helping to achieve optimal health outcomes.

When surgery is recommended, BreastScreen is no longer involved in the patient’s management, but still needs to access the surgical pathology results to correlate with the results from assessment and ensure the lesion of concern has been excised.

When a diagnostic open biopsy was recommended by BreastScreen, the surgical pathology result is needed to decide whether it is appropriate for the patient to be returned to the screening program.

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