419P - Breast arterial calcifications on mammogram and its clinical implications

Background

Mammogram is a mandatory screening test for women from 40 years of age in the most parts of the world. While the structural screening for Coronary artery disease doesn’t exist but Women with breast cancer share common risk factors for coronary artery disease (CAD) as well. By using mammogram we can detect the potentially high risk patients, common for both the diseases and this is going to help in long way. Literature suggests that breast arterial classification exist in up to 8- 26% in women undergoing mammogram. In this study we have explored incidence of the total calcifications on mammogram and the percentage of people having Coronary artery diseases in a retrospective to manner.

Methods

It’s a retrospective observation of all mammograms done in past one year for routine screening from three institutes during the study period 2020-2021. Those with calcifications were interviewed and for the willing population we evaluated the coronary artery disease status clinically and radiologically. The mammogram calcifications were classified into mild, moderate, and severe as per the existing literature, so as the findings of the coronary angiogram. The incidence of the calcifications and the presence of CAD in the population were represented as percentages. Medcalc software version 10.1 was used for the analysis.

Results

There are 400 subjects whose complete case records besides the mammograms were available during the study period. Out of these patients 45 had some form of calcifications on mammograms with varying severity. Out of the 45 subjects 38 patients had coronary angiogram testing (either conventional or CT). We could observe 30 of them harboring moderate to severe atherosclerotic changes and varying degree of coronary artery stenosis.

Conclusions

Conclusion The results here hence strongly advocate the radiologists to report the same findings and should prompt the screening physician to encourage the patients for their cardiac risk assessment. In these multi-centre study patients with suspected coronary artery disease, our timely intervention changed the diagnosis and management of patients, who underwent mammogram for screening, but were unaware of the coronary disease, which led to improved outcomes on cardiac aspects.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.