Usefulness of staging chest-CT in patients with operable breast cancer
Fig 2
Representative examples of the four-point scaling likelihood scores for a (a) very low level of suspicion (including those without pulmonary nodules); (b) low level of suspicion; (c) indeterminate level of suspicion; and (d) definite metastasis.
(a) Score 1. Axial staging chest-CT scan of a 53-year-old female with pathologic stage I breast cancer showing a 4-mm sized polygonal shaped nodule with a thin tag extending to the pleura in the right lower lobe, which probably represents an intrapulmonary lymph node. (b) Score 2. Axial staging chest-CT scan of a 72-year-old female with pathologic stage II breast cancer showing a 3-mm sized solid nodule in the right upper lobe. The likelihood score for presence of metastasis was score 2. (c) Score 3. Axial staging chest-CT scan of a 59-year-old female with pathologic stage I breast cancer showing a 6-mm sized solid nodule in the right lower lobe, which was classified as score 3. (d) Score 4. Axial staging chest-CT scan of a 39-year-old female with pathologic stage II breast cancer showing a 22-mm-sized lobulating nodule in the right lower lobe with ground-glass opacities. This nodule subsequently disappeared on follow-up chest-CT and was finally diagnosed as a benign inflammatory nodule.