Your Next Mammogram Will Come With A Test For Breast Density. Here's What Doctors Want You To Know
Your next mammogram will come with some additional information on the density of your breasts. That’s courtesy of a new rule from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that went into effect today.
It’s common for women to have dense breasts, but it also means that you’re at a greater risk of developing breast cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). But what are dense breasts and how can you know if you have them? Here’s the deal.
Meet the expert: Gloria A Bachmann, MD, associate dean for women’s health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Richard Reitherman, MD, PhD, board certified radiologist and medical director of breast imaging at MemorialCare Breast Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California.
What are dense breasts?
Breast density is a term that classifies the amounts of fat, glandular tissue (the part that produces milk), and stromal tissue (support tissue) in your breasts.
“If a woman's mammogram demonstrates that 50 percent or more of her breast volume is white—stromal tissue on a mammogram—then she will be designated as having ‘dense’ breasts,” explains Richard Reitherman, MD, PhD, board certified radiologist and medical director of breast imaging at MemorialCare Breast Center at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, California.
What does a dense breast feel like?
Unfortunately, you can’t feel if you have dense breasts, and your doctor can’t determine it during a breast exam either, per the NCI. It can only be determined by a radiologist from looking at your mammogram results.
How can you tell if you have dense breasts?
Again, there’s no way for you to know if you have dense breasts without a mammogram. But if 50 percent or more of your breast tissue is stromal tissue, you have dense breasts, Reitherman says. If less than 50 percent is stromal tissue, you are not considered to have dense breasts.
Does having dense breasts make breast cancer more likely?
This is slightly complicated. Having dense breasts isn’t considered something that’s abnormal or a disease, according to the NCI. Meaning, you shouldn’t panic if your mammogram results say that you have dense breasts—lots of women do, too.
But having dense breasts can make it harder for a radiologist to spot breast cancer on a mammogram. “Because the normal stromal tissue is white and cancer is white, the denser the breast, the more difficult it is to detect the cancer,” Reitherman explains.
Dense breasts are also considered a risk factor for breast cancer, per the NCI. That risk is separate from the effect of dense breasts on the ability to read a mammogram, the organization says.
What should I do if I have dense breasts?
As of right now, there’s no official recommendation that you do anything if your mammogram results determine that you have dense breasts. Given that breast cancer involves a lot of potential risk factors, this can be tricky.
If your mammogram says that you have dense breasts, Bachmann recommends talking with your doctor. They may want to do an additional screenings—like a breast MRI—to further evaluate you, since it's more difficult to detect breast cancer when you have dense breasts.
“Every woman should assess her risk for breast cancer, especially if she has dense breasts,” says Gloria A Bachmann, MD, associate dean for women’s health at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. “Those women with a family history of breast cancer should get genetic screening to evaluate their own personal risk of breast cancer.”
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