In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I want to share some vital information to everyone reading. About 1 in 8 U.S. women (about 12.4%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of their lifetime, and about 40,920 women in the U.S. are expected to die in 2018 from breast cancer. Though death due to breast cancer has been decreasing, it is very important to regularly check your breasts and take multiple types of screenings, not just your traditional mammogram.
When getting mammograms and testing in general for breast cancer, it is very important to know what kind of breasts you have. Breasts can be classified as either fatty or dense, and there are even different levels to dense breasts. Breast density refers to the amount of fat versus connective and epithelial tissue; and women with dense breast tissue are at higher risk for receiving false negative results when taking a mammogram. Mammograms are more than 80 percent likely to find an existing tumor in a woman who has primarily fat breast tissue compared to only 40 percent in women who have dense breast tissue. Luckily, there are additional screenings such as MBIs, MRIs and biopsies you can take to be confident in your diagnosis.
If you have a family history of breast cancer you should start as early as before 30 for getting mammograms or any type of screening for breast cancer. You also want to make sure you know your breast density because that can make all the difference. If you want to know more information on breast cancer and additional screenings I have attached links below!
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Information on Breast Cancer and Support
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Breast Cancer statistics:
https://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics
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TED Talk on breast density: https://www.ted.com/talks/deborah_rhodes/transcript?language=en
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Info on additional screenings:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/breast-cancer/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20352475