Ultrasound technology may offer a helpful tool for diagnosing women with dense breasts.
The Trouble with Mammograms:
For years, doctors have worried about mammography for women with dense breast tissue. Mammograms are not always reliable in such cases because the technique doesn’t discriminate well between dense tissue and tumor tissue. As a result, it is helpful to have another diagnostic approach for examining this tissue for abnormalities.
How Ultrasound Can Help:
The study that showed ultrasound can help and is reliable involved 2,800 women from Argentina, Canada and the US. They each had three screenings over three years with mammograms and ultrasound.
The tests identified 111 breast cancers, 80 percent of which were invasive. Mammography was effective at picking up calcification, while ultrasound was better at detecting invasive cancers and those without calcification.
Disadvantage of Ultrasound:
The downside is that ultrasound also produced more false positive results, exposing women to anxiety and further and more invasive diagnostic procedures. It is likely that more studies will be needed before physicians will figure out the best way to utilize this new technology and determine how ultrasound can help the most women with possible breast cancer diagnoses.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, online Dec 28, 2015
The topic of mammogram screening has been quite contentious. We have written about the controversy here and here. It is likely that adding ultrasound to the options for screening for breast cancer will also be confusing.
If this topic is of interest to you, you might want to listen to our hour-long interview with Dr. Susan Love, one of the country’s leading experts on breast cancer and author of Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book.
