MIBC 2018: Evaluating Validity of Online Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool
Posted: Friday, October 26, 2018
According to research recently presented at the Melbourne International Joint Breast Congress (Abstract OR16), the online breast cancer risk assessment tool iPrevent may prove to be a useful tool for both women with breast cancer and their care team. Researchers used prospective data to determine the validity of 10-year breast cancer risk estimates determined by the tool.
“iPrevent is well calibrated overall and has good discriminatory accuracy for predicting 10-year [breast cancer] risk, thus justifying its clinical use,” concluded Kelly-Anne Phillips, MD, of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Australia, and colleagues.
The study included 16,574 women between the ages of 18 and 70 who did not have breast cancer and had not undergone a bilateral mastectomy at the time of their enrollment and who were registered in the International Prospective Family Study Cohort. Overall, the online tool expected 690 cases of breast cancer development by the 10-year follow-up, and 655 cases were observed (ratio of expected/observed cases = 1.05). For women in the highest quartile (ie, with a 6% 10-year risk), the ratio of expected to observed cases of breast cancer was 1.19. The overall area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.70.
The online tool calculated cumulative estimates based on self-reported risk factors upon participant entry to the study. To determine proper calibration, the mean risk assessed by the online tool was compared with the mean observed incidence rate of 10-year invasive breast cancer diagnosis using both an overall chi-squared goodness-of-fit statistic as well as by quartiles of risk. To assess discriminatory accuracy, researchers calculated the area under the receiver operator characteristic curve for 10-year breast cancer development.
