Multimodal ultrasound plus tumor markers demonstrates a high value in enhanced diagnosis of breast cancer

Objective: To determine the diagnostic value of multimodal ultrasound combined with tumor markers in breast cancer (BC).

Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on 198 patients with breast lesions treated at the Affiliated Wuxi People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University between May 2020 and May 2023. All patients underwent multimodal ultrasound and tumor marker testing. Among the 198 patients, 88 patients were pathologically diagnosed with benign disease (benign group) and 110 patients were pathologically diagnosed with malignant disease (malignant group). With the pathological results as the gold standard, the benign and malignant results from different diagnostic methods were compared, focusing on specificity, sensitivity and accuracy.

Results: The areas under the curves (AUCs) of carbohydrate antigen 153 (CA153), CA125, and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) for diagnosing BC were 0.810, 0.812, and 0.790, respectively. When these tumor markers were used in combination for diagnosing BC, the AUC increased to 0.928. The AUC of multimodal ultrasound alone in diagnosing BC was 0.845. Additionally, the AUC of multimodal ultrasound combined with tumor markers in diagnosing BC reached 0.971, with the corresponding specificity, sensitivity and accuracy of 90.00%, 94.43% and 91.92%, respectively.

Conclusion: In patients with early BC, the combination of multimodal ultrasound and tumor marker detection significantly improves the accuracy of diagnosing benign and malignant breast lesions compared to using either modality alone.