the role of 99mtc-mibi scientimammography in diagnosis of breast cancer

scientimammography (smm) is a new non-invasive method of imaging breast tumors which in various studies the overall sensitivity of 83%-95.8% and specificity of 52%-95% is reported. the purpose of our study was to evaluate the usefullness of 99mtc-mibi smm in our environment in detecting breast cancer and in reducing the rate of biopsy. 65 patients aged 23-70 years were included in this study. the overall sensitivity and specificity of smm were 84.6% and 71.8% respectively. the ppv of 66.6% and npv of 87.5% were similar to that obtained by others. these results showed that, smm did not increase the specificity and ppv of mammography. however smm is a useful method for evaluating patients with low suspicion or indeterminate mammographic or palpable findings or lesions larger than 1.5 cm.