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Doctors are choosing to operate on women who need breast biopsies more often than recommended by national guidelines rather than perform a safer, cheaper needle biopsy, a university study found.

Almost one-third of the 172,342 biopsies done in the state of Florida from 2003 to 2008 were done surgically, even though national guidelines recommend 10 percent or less should rely on this more costly procedure, according to a study published today by doctors at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Instead, physicians should be relying on needle biopsies when breast abnormalities are detected, the report said.

Women who received surgical biopsies may have been able to avoid any operation had doctors chosen the needle technology, said Stephen R. Grobmyer, senior author of the study appearing in the American Journal of Surgery. About 70 percent to 80 percent of biopsies don’t uncover cancer, he said. The “overused” surgical biopsy technique is costing Florida more than $37 million a year in unnecessary charges, the study found.

“There’s a pretty clear advantage to using needle biopsies, which is less expensive and better for the patient,” Grobmyer, medical director of the university’s breast center, said in a telephone interview. The study showed needle biopsy charges to be as much as half the cost of surgical procedures, he said.

Breast biopsies are performed to investigate whether abnormalities uncovered by mammograms and other imaging technology are cancerous. About 1.6 million breast biopsies are performed nationally every year.

For at least five years, professional medical guidelines have recommended that needle biopsies be used for 90 percent to 95 percent of the procedures. Needle biopsies are often performed by radiologists.

Fewer Infections

The needle biopsies are as effective in diagnosing cancer, result in fewer operations and have lower infections and complications rate, the study found. Many surgical biopsies that uncover a malignancy require follow-up surgery to make sure the entire cancer is removed, particularly when the lymph nodes are involved.

“This may suggest that more education is needed for both doctors and patients,” Grobmyer said. “An opportunity to cut costs and make things better for patients is being missed.”

An estimated 207,000 breast cancer cases were diagnosed in 2010 and the disease killed about 40,000 women, according to the National Cancer Institute.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pat Wechsler in New York at pwechsler@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale in New York at rgale5@bloomberg.net