Computer tomography of cancer of the breast - a report based on cases as an object lesson

The autor describes a newly developed technique for computed tomography of the breast. Mammary tumours were seen to absorb the contrast medium so that the measured values were increased by a minimum of 50 Hounsfield units as compared to unenhanced CT scans. Fourty-six percent of the patients examined were found to have axillary adenopathy and twenty percent of the mammographies proved to be multicentric. The author comes to the conclusion that mammography detects, if at all, only the largest of any tumours present and that a zone between the ribs and pectoral muscles, which measures approx. 2 cm in thickness, is not visualised by mammography. (orig./GDG)