Should women with dense breast tissue undergo ultrasound screening after mammography?
A 71-year-old woman credits her early detection of breast cancer to a combination of ultrasound and mammography testing of her dense breast tissue, according to a report by The Scranton Times-Tribune of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Pauline Reedy said that her cancer was found one to two years earlier because of the additional testing advised by her physician, according to the article.
“When you are trying to distinguish white on top of white, it’s very challenging, like trying to find a polar bear in a snowstorm,” Susan Summerton, MD, a radiologist with Delta Medix Medical Group in Scranton, told the Times. “An ultrasound is extremely helpful in looking through dense tissue because it displays the tissue in a different way.”
However, an ultrasound does not replace a mammogram and vice versa, according to Summerton who added that since January of this year, her clinic has performed 200 supplemental ultrasounds which detected five cases of breast cancer that were not identified by mammograms alone.
See the Scranton Times-Tribune's entire article below.
A recent graduate from Dominican University (IL) with a bachelor’s in journalism, Melissa joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering all aspects of health imaging. She’s a fan of singing and playing guitar, elephants, a good cup of tea, and her golden retriever Cooper.