While cancer screening rates have improved among minorities, there are still racial and ethnic disparities in diagnosis and treatment. In usual practice, breast biopsies are performed days to weeks after biopsy recommendation, which can lead patients to delay or forego screening. Researchers sought to identify whether racial and ethnic disparities exist in the time from biopsy recommendation to biopsy and whether a same-day biopsy program could eliminate this issue.
They found that a same-day biopsy program eliminated racial and ethnic disparities in the time from breast biopsy recommendation to biopsy, and the results were presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting.
Researchers identified all diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound exams leading to biopsy before (September 2016 to March 2017) and after (September 2017 to March 2018) the implementation of a same-day biopsy program in which biopsy occurred on the same day as the recommendation. They compared patient age, race, language, insurance type, days to biopsy, and proportion of same-day biopsies pre- and post-intervention.
A total of 663 patients underwent biopsy before the intervention and 482 underwent biopsy after the intervention. For all patients, the same-day biopsy program decreased the mean time from diagnostic examination to biopsy from eight (interquartile range [IQR] = 4-13) to zero (IQR=0-4) days (P<0.001).
Before the program’s implementation, non-white patients had a significantly longer time to biopsy (aCoefficient = 2.30; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.58-4.03), as did individuals on government insurance (aCoefficient = 1.67; 95% CI, 0.02-3.32; P<0.05). Increasing age (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.97; 95% CI, 0.95-0.99) and having government insurance (aOR=0.35; 95% CI, 0.14-0.88) were significantly associated with decreased odds of having a same-day biopsy (P<0.05).
After implementation of the same-day biopsy program, the researchers reported that there was no evidence of racial or ethnic disparities in time to breast cancer biopsy.
Reference
Gupta S, Wang C, Raetz EA, et al. Impact of a same-day breast biopsy program on disparities in time to biopsy. Abstract #10005. Presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, May 31, 2019.