Distribution of breast skin blood flow in patients with breast cancer

Highly vascularized tumours are associated with fast growth and high grade. Accurate, objective assessment of skin blood flow in the breast can be obtained by the recent development of a laser Doppler imager (LDI) that creates an image of tissue blood flow over a wide area. The imager collects flow data without touching the breast skin. Breast skin blood flow was mapped using the LDI in an outpatient clinic on 100 patients (47 normal, 26 benign breast disease and 27 breast carcinoma). The findings were correlated with the results of examination by mammography/ultrasound and cytology/histology. The LDI blood flow images of the normal breasts were analysed in five breast regions (four quadrants and central area) and flow values for each region were averaged. The mean blood flow in normal patients was 299 ± 155 and 311 ± 157 flux (± SD) for the right and left breasts, respectively. In patients with benign breast disease it was 476 ± 210 flux and in patients with breast carcinoma it was 685 ± 278 flux. Breasts with carcinoma show the highest skin blood flow measurements. Our findings indicate that the technique is sensitive for large cancers. This new tool may have an application in the serial monitoring of early response to systemic treatment in patients with large superficial tumour masses.