A Clinico-Pathological Correlation of Breast Lumps in a Tertiary Care Centre

BACKGROUND Breast lump is one of the most prevalent ailments that women face. Mostly these lumps are benign, but breast malignancy is the most common form of cancer and is the second leading cause of malignancy deaths in women. Fibroadenoma is the most common benign breast mass and invasive ductal carcinoma is the most common malignancy. Delay in the detection causes the malignancy to progress to an advanced stage. Early detection of malignancies in initial stages is done using triple test to decrease mortality. Incidence of breast cancer can be reduced by 30% by the routine mammographic screening of healthy women. We wanted to correlate the clinical and pathological diagnosis in patients presenting with palpable breast lumps and assess the reliability of clinical examination as a pre-procedural diagnostic tool in this study. METHODS A prospective observational study was done in a total of 100 women. Detailed clinical history and examination were done and then compared to histopathological results. The final results were statistically analyzed. RESULTS The clinical examination exhibited a sensitivity of 97.96% and a specificity of 96.08% for the identification of cancer when the data were considered collectively. The clinical examination's positive predictive value was 95.84%, and its negative predictive value was 98.08%. CONCLUSIONS A significant correlation was also observed between the clinical diagnosis and final pathological diagnosis. So routine clinical examination would definitely be helpful in early diagnosis.