What research should we be doing?
Hello BCNA community! This is my first post. I'm a scientist working on breast cancer and I was looking through some of the threads here and it strikes me that the issues we scientists think are the i...
Forum Discussion
@LIttleBlueWren - I was always told I had 'lumpy breasts' and was advised I had cysts back in the 80s - this was before Breast Screening, I think. I am assuming that even back then, they were 'dense breast tissue'.
Whenever you have a mammogram at BreastScreen, they can see then & there, that some women have more white tissue showing (dense breast tissue) - and as Breast Cancer Tumours ALSO show up as 'white' - mammograms often don't 'see' the tumours that are there as it is 'white on white' & you are sent home with a false sense of security, that you are 'clear'.
But they elect NOT to advise us (at this point in time, only WA does this.)
Here is a post with pics (well worth reading the whole post) Looking at the pics - 'd' and the next one showing a tumour - you can understand why mammograms are not always the best tool for identifying it in Dense Breast Tissue :
https://onlinenetwork.bcna.org.au/discussion/19539/breast-density-workshop-adelaide-papers-online/p3
Here is a thread put up by BCNA about it tho:
https://onlinenetwork.bcna.org.au/discussion/18407/breast-density-we-want-your-input/p1
Many of us are advocating that it is our RIGHT to be advised that we have dense breast tissue when we have our Mammogram, as it is considered more effective to have an ultrasound and/MRI than relying only on a mammogram (which missed my tumours twice in 6 months.)
@wingman is keen that we ARE told .... and gave us this link to read:
If you are interested in where we're at with density notification in Australia please have a look at the summary we put together https://www.informd.org.au/density-notification.html
Your GP & Surgeon 'should' know - assuming they have looked at the films done by Breastscreen, rather than just read the report.
Whenever you have a mammogram at BreastScreen, they can see then & there, that some women have more white tissue showing (dense breast tissue) - and as Breast Cancer Tumours ALSO show up as 'white' - mammograms often don't 'see' the tumours that are there as it is 'white on white' & you are sent home with a false sense of security, that you are 'clear'.
But they elect NOT to advise us (at this point in time, only WA does this.)
Here is a post with pics (well worth reading the whole post) Looking at the pics - 'd' and the next one showing a tumour - you can understand why mammograms are not always the best tool for identifying it in Dense Breast Tissue :
https://onlinenetwork.bcna.org.au/discussion/19539/breast-density-workshop-adelaide-papers-online/p3
Here is a thread put up by BCNA about it tho:
https://onlinenetwork.bcna.org.au/discussion/18407/breast-density-we-want-your-input/p1
Many of us are advocating that it is our RIGHT to be advised that we have dense breast tissue when we have our Mammogram, as it is considered more effective to have an ultrasound and/MRI than relying only on a mammogram (which missed my tumours twice in 6 months.)
@wingman is keen that we ARE told .... and gave us this link to read:
If you are interested in where we're at with density notification in Australia please have a look at the summary we put together https://www.informd.org.au/density-notification.html
Your GP & Surgeon 'should' know - assuming they have looked at the films done by Breastscreen, rather than just read the report.