However, MRI and ultrasound can detect cancer in dense breast tissue with about 97% accuracy, fortunately!
FORBES: Beware Overreaching Government Efforts to Detect Breast Cancer
That's why it's especially important for women with dense breast tissue to be vigilant about getting mammograms.
CNN: Health - Hormone replacement may influence mammography accuracy
If readers do not know already, dense breast tissue appears white on a mammogram as does breast cancer.
FORBES: Beware Overreaching Government Efforts to Detect Breast Cancer
So mammography is highly ineffective for 40% of women (those with dense breast tissue) who undergo mammographic screening.
FORBES: Beware Overreaching Government Efforts to Detect Breast Cancer
Pooling data on 78, 000 women in six different practices, Dr. Weigert found that about half of the women, or 8, 651 patients, with dense breast tissue went on to have ultrasounds which found 28 cancers that weren't visible on mammograms.
However, I take offence at putting a price cap on saving the lives of tens of thousands of mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends with dense breast tissue who suffer unnecessarily and die needlessly from late stage breast cancer due to missed detection of mammographic screenings.
FORBES: Beware Overreaching Government Efforts to Detect Breast Cancer
"The vast majority of women are capable of hearing this information and not freaking out, " says the Mayo Clinic's Dr. Rhodes, who is studying a new technology, Molecular Breast Imaging, that uses a tracer substance that makes cancer cells highly visible, and which she says shows promise in detecting cancers in dense breast tissue.
The dense-breast debate comes at a time when the value of breast-cancer screening in general is being questioned.
Oncologists Weiss and Litton discourage routine mammograms for younger women, because their breast tissues are dense, making it harder to detect abnormalities and resulting in unnecessary biopsies.
The aim of the trial was to see if it made the women's breasts easier to examine in mammograms because young women's breast tissue is dense, making it hard for X-rays to pick up tumours.
Today Norton's "dose-dense" regimen is common practice for certain breast cancer patients at high risk of relapse after surgery.
The association of adult height with increased risk suggests that exposures during childhood and early adolescence (possibly a calorie-dense diet) may influence the risk of breast cancer.
FORBES: After 40 Years Of Research, What Do We Know About Preventing Breast Cancer?
应用推荐