Assessment of Tools to Diagnose Cancer in Patients with Early Stage Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review

Breast cancer is an uncontrolled and unnatural proliferation of cells in different breast tissues. The first measure to diagnose breast cancer is an examination by a surgeon followed by mammography, sonography, sampling, and other diagnosing methods. Given that there are several methods to diagnose breast cancer, and most of them are quite expensive, the present systematic review compares the expenses and effectiveness of different methods to diagnose breast cancer.

The study was carried out as a systematic review through searching databases, i.e., PubMed, Web of Science, Magiran, Scopus, and Embase for articles published from March 1999 to May 31, 2017. The research articles regarding health technology assessment and economic assessment (n = 8) were examined.

Generally, conducting MRI screening and digital mammography every six months after the age of 30 are proved to be the most efficient and economical methods to screen carriers of BRCA (BReast CAncer) mutated genes. Besides, implementing both the techniques simultaneously was more cost-efficient with BRCA1 compared to BRCA2. Some studies have revealed that genetic tests and Oncotype tests, in particular, were the most cost-efficient methods to diagnose the disease, especially in its early stages.

Consequently, indexing gene expression in individuals with BRCA gene mutation is revealed to more cost-efficient.