Mammographic artifact leading to false-positive result.

Abstract

Dear Editor,A female, 75-year-old was referred by another service withprevious screening mammogram demonstrating clustered pleo-morphic microcalcifications in the superolateral quadrant of herleft breast, classified as highly suspicious mammographic find-ings (BI-RADS category 5), to be submitted to mammography-guided needle localization followed by excisional biopsy of thesuspicious lesion.A new mammography demonstrated an apparently benignnodule already present and stable in relation to the findings of theprevious mammogram, besides the presence of clustered pleo-morphic microcalcifications, both findings located in the supero-lateral quadrant of the left breast. The finding of suspicious micro-calcifications drew attention for being a round-shaped cluster(Figures 1A and 1B).A new assessment detected a skin nevus with irregular sur-face presenting with talc residues in the lesion fissures. Once thelesion was marked with a metal clip, a new mammographic im-age revealed that the microcalcifications corresponded to artifactsrelated to the talc residues present on the dermal nevus surface(Figures 1C and 1D). The mammogram was reclassified as be-nign mammographic findings (BI-RADS category 2) and the pa-tient was referred for follow-up at the public basic health network.Except for non-melanoma skin tumors, breast cancer is themost frequent neoplasm with high mortality in women in Bra-zil