Breast Cancer – Mammogram Screening

Transcript

“Some of the more concerning features — the breasts are very dense, especially in young premenopausal women — we’re looking for is abnormally abnormal areas. So there are some areas when there’s densities that look a little abnormal, but through advanced imaging or now with 3d and a lot of the graphics and the high-tech imaging that we have now, we can usually see through some of that, 3d has really revolutionized that, but what we’re looking for is there any distortion, is there anything or a speculation or anything that’s changed in the normal architecture of that mammogram, or if there’s a solid mass that persists with advanced imaging, it could be a cyst. It could be a fibroadenoma which are benign processes, or it actually could be a cancer, which ultimately needs a biopsy, but that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for changes and abnormal changes to the mammogram itself.

Some of the benign features that we like to see, especially on mammogram and ultrasound, if it has smooth borders, if it’s evenly dispersed, those are better signs that that’s a benign process. One of the things that we look at is if there’s a mass on ultrasound, if it’s wider than tall, if it’s smooth, rounded, those are things that all imply that this is a benign process. Does it look like a cyst? Is it fluid filled? So some of those are the things that we look at that advanced imaging like ultrasound will help us decipher. Is this something that’s benign that we could just follow up? Or is it something that actually needs to move on to the biopsy?”