Evaluating the Accuracy of the "Breastlight" as a Screening Tool for Breast Cancer in Iraq

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in Iraq and is the leading cause of death among women. The poor survival reflects the limited public awareness among the general population. The Hope light , a domestic breast checker, has been designed as an aid for breast cancer awareness The present study was carried on a randomly selected sample of 150 female patients who visited the Main Training and Research Centre for early detection of breast cancer in Baghdad. Patients were examined with the Hope light device; the findings were compared with the results of clinical breast examination, mammography, ultrasound, and fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) as the gold standard for sensitivity and specificity. Breast cancer was detected in 24% of the cases. Among those, the Hope light demonstrated positive findings in 80.56% (True Positive). On the other hand, in 19.44%, the device failed to reveal any positive finding (False Negative). FNAC revealed benign pathology in 73.72%. Of those, negative findings were recorded using the device in 53.47%, ( True Negative), while in the remaining 46.53% the device yielded False positive findings. In conclusion, although the accuracy of the Hope Light in detecting palpable malignant breast lumps was significant, nevertheless, the observed high false positive detection rate and the significantly low specificity in excluding malignancy preclude its use as a screening tool for breast cancer.