Newswatch: May 2006

IMV releases new report on US mammography centers

The IMV Medical Information Division (Des Plaines, Ill) has released its annual Mammography Center Market Summary Report, which monitors trends in the products and services used by mammography centers. Mammography centers have emerged in a variety of settings to improve access for breast-care patients. In addition to the traditional hospital radiology department, both hospital- and nonhospital-based practices have developed a women's breast-center approach, in which they market and offer a continuum of services addressing breast cancer.

"More than 1,000 of the 8,815 sites certified by the FDA in the United States participated in the study, including hospitals, independent imaging centers, and physicians' offices," said Lorna Young, IMV's senior director of market research. "Based on their responses, we project that 37.7 million mammography procedures were performed in 2005, up 2 percent from 37.0 million in 2004. In 2005, an estimated 11 percent of the procedures were performed on full-field digital mammography [FFDM] systems in 2005."

The report describes the variety of mammography-center settings, their current uses, and their plans for adopting breast-imaging technology, including FFDM; it also profiles other services offered at these locations. Highlights include:

• the reported mix of screening versus diagnostic procedures performed was 76% screening and 24% diagnostic;
• about 21% of the sites indicate that the typical lead time to schedule a screening mammography appointment is less than 1 day, 52% from 1 day to 1 week, 20% from 1 week to 1 month, and 7% of more than 1 month;
• ultrasound is used for breast imaging at nearly 75% of the mammography centers; other imaging modalities--including scintimammography, breast MRI, and PET scanning for breast cancer--are available at these centers to lesser degrees;
• more than one third of the mammography centers currently use CAD software systems to improve the diagnostic confidence of X-ray mammography;
• ultrasound-guided biopsies are performed by nearly half, stereotactic biopsies are performed at more than one fourth, and MRI-guided biopsies are performed at 2% of the mammography sites; and
• other women's healthcare services profiled include bone mineral densitometry studies, outpatient surgical procedures like lumpectomy, cholesterol screening, and cardiac screening for women.

Medical Imaging spoke with Debra Mitchell, MD, co-owner of Breast Imaging of Oklahoma (Edmond, Oka), regarding her reaction to the report. "It continues a trend that we've seen in the past few years, that there are fewer mammography centers that are performing more studies," Mitchell said. "That is evident by the number of certified sites, which are going down as the number of procedures are going up. So that's a large burden on the sites that continue to do mammography and, as a general rule, we're all becoming more specialized. Breast imaging is truly considered its own entity and not just part of a hospital radiology department."

As for the future going forward, Mitchell said she believes that there is still a long way to go before errors in breast detection are eliminated. "I think those of us performing mammography will always want to improve the statistics on the number of women that are screened and improve our diagnostic abilities," she said. "That's partly going to happen through using different imaging modalities, such as ultrasound and MRI. [Also, it will happen when we are] able to tailor breast imaging to the patient on an individual basis, so that it's not one-size-fits-all imaging, and the imaging is based on the patient's family history, personal history, and risk factors. For my world, that's what I'd like to happen, so that we can use our higher-level, expensive imaging modalities--like MRI--widely, but use them where we need to use them."

IMV's 2005 Mammography Center Market Summary Report is a comprehensive analysis of the mammography market, monitoring trends in mammography procedures performed, X-ray mammography installed base by vendor and planned purchases, workstations, and women's healthcare services offered. For more information about the report, visit the corporate Web site at www.imvlimited.com, or contact Lorna Young at (414) 332-7801 or .