Sonographic blood flow measurements in malignant breast tumors. A potential new prognostic factor

Abstract

Background: The aim of this study was to find a possible relationship between the biological behavior of carcinomas of the breast and sonographically detectable blood flow after first studies showed a correlation between blood flow and prognostic factors.

Method: 259 patients with ductal invasive breast cancer were examined using MEM (i.e., the Maximum Entropy Method), a new sonographic blood flow measurement technique capable of discerning considerably slower blood flow velocities than Doppler sonography. Due to the lack of objective methods for quantifying the blood flow, the findings were divided into three classes dependent upon the visual color information obtained. The blood flow was correlated with the size of the tumor, lymph node and receptor status, ploidy and S-phase fraction.

Results: Most of the patients with small tumors, without lymph node metastases, with positive receptors, with a diploid genome, and with a low S-phase fraction belonged to the group with the lowest blood flow.

Conclusion: The close relationship between the established prognostic factors and the sonographic blood flow measurements using MEM might be indicative of a new preoperative prognostic factor; this must, however, be confirmed by larger studies.