What You Should Know About Dense Breasts and Mammography
By April Beaman, RDH, CTT
commercials and billboards telling us to “get your mammogram,” and every year, millions of women are subjected to ion- izing radiation—the most harmful type of radiation—as directed by their health care providers. But is mammography the best screening tool for breast cancer de- tection, especially for those women with dense breasts?
A What Does It Mean to Have Dense Breasts?
If you’re reading this, my guess is that you’ve been told you have dense breasts. What exactly are dense breasts and why should you care? Having dense breasts is very common; in fact, it is a condition in close to 50% of women. If you have dense breasts, you were most likely given that information following a mammo- gram. While it is not an abnormal find- ing, nor cause for immediate concern, it can increase your chance of developing breast cancer in the future.
s women, every October we are bombarded with pink ribbons, athletes wearing pink socks, and
Dense breasts have nothing to do with
your bra size or how they look or feel. It’s also not the same as having lumpy (cystic) breasts. Rather, it is the appearance of the tissue on a mammogram (X-ray) that diag- noses breast density. Breasts are comprised of fatty, glandular, and fibrous connective tissue; the amount of each tissue type can vary depending on the woman, as well as her age. Fatty tissue is non-dense and ap- pears dark on a mammogram, while fibrous and granular tissue is dense and appears white. Being told you have dense breasts simply means there’s a higher percentage of fibrous or glandular tissue in relation- ship to fatty tissue within the breasts. The catch is that having dense breasts makes detecting cancer difficult on a mammo- gram. Dense tissue appears white and so does cancer; thus, tumors are often missed within the dense tissue. Think of it as look- ing for a snowball in a snowstorm.
Mammography vs. Breast Thermography
Mammography is known as the standard of care for breast cancer screenings, but
over the past decade it has been undergo- ing steady scrutiny. There’s no denying that mammograms have saved lives and are helpful in detecting cancer. However, mammograms are known to be less reliable for women with dense breasts because density decreases the sensitivity and ef- fectiveness of mammography. This can lead to inclusive or false-negative mammograms and may require an additional screen- ing using ultrasound or thermography. If you’ve been told you have dense breasts, it is important that you do not rely solely on mammography to check for breast cancer.
Breast thermography is a technology
that picks up thermal changes in breast tissue, which are the precursors for breast tissue anomalies that can become can- cerous. With thermography, physicians can also detect cancerous processes and tumors in the early stages. Furthermore, breast density does not affect the results or lower the sensitivity of thermogra- phy, making thermograms accurate for all women, of all ages, with any breast type—including dense breasts. Unlike a
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