Spiculations - are they ever benign?

mom4girls

Hello,

I'm 49 and got my first callback ever to have a diagnostic mammo and ultrasound. Previous years showed some scattered dense tissue but nothing else. I'm worried about the word "spiculations". From what I have read it's one of the "bad" words. Does this ever indicate a benign condition? Has anyone else ever had this and everything was fine? My follow-up testing is 6 long days from now. Here are the results from the screening. Any input is appreciated! Thanks!

TECHNIQUE: Standard CC and MLO digital tomographic views of both breasts were obtained.

BREAST DENSITY: The breasts have scattered areas of fibroglandular density( ACR Category

FINDINGS: The right outer posterior CC view is a small 5 mm nodulara asymmetrywith a few mild spiculations located 15 cm from the nipple not visualized in the MLO projection.

No other suspicious mass, clustered microcalcifications or architectural distortion is present. No skin thickening or skin retraction is noted. Benign calcifications are present.

IMPRESSION:

Right outer posterior 5 mm nodular asymmetry with few spiculations seen only in the CC projection.

ASSESSMENT: BI-RADS 0, additional imaging necessary.

MelissaDallas

Spiculations can definitely be seen in some benign conditions. Also, since they only think they see a few on one view, they may change their minds with additional imaging.

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/pdf/10.1148/radiographics.13.4.8356272

mom4girls

That's encouraging. Going to read the article you included right now!

Thanks so much Melissa 🙂