A prospective study of 8413 asymptomatic women undergoing mammography.

The authors report a 1-year prospective study of 8413 asymptomatic women who underwent mammography. Of 221 patients who underwent biopsy with preoperative needle localization, 61 proved to have a malignant lesion. The positive predictive value of mammography was 0.22 for microcalcifications without a mass, 0.64 for microcalcifications within a circumscribed mass or with architectural distortion and 0.33 for circumscribed densities or architectural distortions without microcalcification. The positive predictive value for carcinoma is broken down into age groups.