Consider breast density alongside cancer risk for further screening
Patients need to know not all dense breasts are the same, says US study
Breast-density notification combined with breast-cancer risk helps identify women at high risk of advanced breast cancer who might benefit from supplemental imaging, a US study suggests.
Researchers used data from more than 638,000 women in an effort to identify the most efficient strategy for targeting women for discussions about supplemental imaging.
Women with dense breasts accounted for 47% of screened women and 60% of advanced cancers, the team reported in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Higher advanced-cancer rates of 0.61 or more cases per 1000 mammograms were seen in 6% of screened women with heterogeneously dense breasts and a five-year Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) cancer risk of 2.5% or higher, the researchers found.
