Needle biopsy called the gold standard

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- A third of U.S. women suspected of having breast cancer get open surgery biopsies, though the needle biopsy represents "best practice," researchers say.

A panel recently convened at the International Consensus Conference on Image Detected Breast Cancer III unanimously agreed that percutaneous needle biopsy is the way to go and should be the "gold standard" for initial diagnosis of breast abnormalities.

Their report, published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, says the open surgery biopsies are still being done despite needle biopsies being equally accurate with much less risk of infection and at lower cost.

"In spite of considerable agreement in the medical literature and national recommendations published by industry thought leaders such as the American College of Surgeons and the American Society of Breast Surgeons, there was only a small decrease in the number of surgical biopsies since our last conference four years ago," Dr. Melvin Silverstein of the Hoag Breast Care Center in Newport Beach, Calif., and of the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California in Los Angeles, said in a statement

Silverstein was chairman of the 2001, 2005 and 2009 Consensus Conferences.