Contemporary diagnostic approaches for nonpalpable carcinoma of the breast: the role of the radiologist.

Over the past 25 years the radiologist's role in the diagnosis of breast cancer has expanded from merely confirming the clinical suspicion of neoplasm to detecting occult nonpalpable tumors and now percutaneously obtaining tissue for histologic assessment. The cancer the radiologists discover is smaller in size and earlier in stage, allowing more conservative surgical approaches. This, coupled with adjuvant radiation therapy and chemotherapy, is producing newly demonstrated mortality reduction in this disease so feared by American women.