Comparison of the Outcome of Low Dose and High-Dose Corticosteroid in the Treatment of Idiopathic Granulomatous Mastitis.

BACKGROUND: Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis (IGM) is a rare chronic inflammatory breast condition with unknown etiology. Different treatments including corticosteroids have been recommended with no universal consensus. In this study we evaluated the efficacy of low dose vs. high dose prednisolone in treatment of IGM. METHODS: In this randomized clinical trial, 30 female patients with IGM were randomly allocated to receive low dose or high dose prednisolone. First group received 5 mg daily prednisolone, while the second group received 50 mg for three days, 25 mg for the next three days and then 12.5 mg for further three days and 5 mg daily afterwards, both for two months. Patients were evaluated 2, 3, 6 and 12 months after treatment. The success and recurrence rate was compared between groups. RESULTS: High dose group had significantly higher rate of remission compared to low dose group (93.3% vs. 53.3%, p=0.03). One patient in high dose group and 5 patients in low dose group underwent lumpectomy due to persistent symptoms. Two other patients in low dose group received high dose treatment after three months due to no change in symptoms. Among patients with remission, recurrence was also significantly lower in high dose compared to low dose prednisolone (0% vs. 37.5%, p=0.04). CONCLUSION: High dose prednisolone has high success rate with lower recurrence in the treatment of IGM and could reduce the need for surgery. However, further studies are necessary to confirm these findings.

Diagnostic value of a power Doppler ultrasound-based malignancy index for differentiating malignant and benign solid breast lesions.

BACKGROUND: Power Doppler ultrasound (PDUS) can provide useful information regarding the vascularity of breast lesions. The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic performance of a new PDUS-driven malignancy index in differentiating between malignant and benign causes of solid breast lesions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Patients with solid breast lesions were enrolled consecutively and evaluated first by PDUS and subsequently by histopathologic assessment after undergoing surgical biopsy. A custom-made software was used to extract data from images for calculating malignancy index formula. RESULTS: A total of 87 patients with solid breast lesions were enrolled. Histopathologic evaluation identified 49 patients as benign and 38 patients as malignant. Malignancy index was significantly higher in the malignant group as compared to benign tumors (6.31 vs 0.30,P < 0.001). Area under the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve (AUC) was 0.98 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.95-1.00). According to the ROC curve analysis, the cut-off point of 1.23 for malignancy index had a sensitivity and specificity of 94.7% (95% CI 82.2-99.3) and 94.0% (95% CI 83.1-98.7), respectively. CONCLUSION: Comparing with the histopathologic evaluation as the gold standard for diagnosing breast lesions, PDUS-driven malignancy index was shown to have a high discriminative performance in identifying malignant lesions with high sensitivity, specificity, and diagnostic accuracy. The noninvasive nature of PDUS is an important advantage that could prevent unnecessary biopsies.