Supply Chain Vulnerabilities in Breast Imaging: Site- and Network-Level Strategies for a Concentrated Consumable Market.

Abstract

Image-guided vacuum-assisted biopsy is the standard of care for sampling suspicious breast lesions and depends on single-use, vendor-proprietary consumables produced by a concentrated set of manufacturers. The January 2026 Hologic Brevera 9-gauge needle recall and the subsequent FDA shortage designation exposed the fragility of this supply chain. To examine the three principal strategies available to breast imaging programs for mitigating consumable supply disruptions (strategic inventory stockpiling, vendor diversification, and protocol and procurement standardization) and to describe how standardization functions as the connective infrastructure enabling the other two at network scale. Stockpiling provides an immediate operational buffer; vendor diversification eliminates structural single-source dependency; standardization allows both to operate consistently across distributed sites. No single strategy is sufficient alone. Enterprise-scale measures such as cross-site inventory redistribution presuppose centralized governance and resources, and continuity planning should hold community sites to the same standard as the primary campus.