A high-profile, $100 million breast cancer screening study is touting a new enrollment milestone.
The Tomosynthesis Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (TMIST) just recently reached 65,000 participants, surpassing the halfway mark toward its current goal of 128,905. Organizers said Friday that enrollment has doubled over the last year and a half, with Black women accounting for more than 20% of enrollment.
“We are encouraged by the high number of under-represented minority patients in TMIST,” medical oncologist Edith Mitchell, MD, co-chair of the Health Equity Committee at the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, which is leading the study, said in a statement.
The trial first launched in 2017, aiming to compare digital breast tomosynthesis against older 2D mammography technology. It has previously faced setbacks including the COVID-19 pandemic, with organizers originally hoping to hit 165,000 participants by the end of 2020. Some physicians have been slow to sign up, Medscape reported, already convinced that DBT is the superior technology.
However, Mitchell and colleagues note that only about 45% of accredited mammography scanners are 3D units, and almost 20% of U.S. imaging facilities don’t have one in their repertoire. Oftentimes such facilities are in underserved areas. One recent study found that digital breast tomosynthesis is underused among minority populations. While sensitivity is higher for DBT compared to 2D mammography, researchers are hoping to confirm whether this advantage benefits women while bolstering survival rates.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.