Mammograms are essential tools for women's health, especially as you age. These tests examine your breast tissue for anomalies or growths that could indicate cancer before you can detect it yourself.
Dense breast tissue is one of the findings many women stress about, but it's not always a problem. It may make breast self-exams a little more complicated because of the excess fibrous and glandular breast tissue.
If you need a mammogram or have dense breast tissue, Dr. John Paul Robert and our team provide breast exams and other women's health services at our office in Plano, Texas.
Dr. Roberts is an experienced and compassionate OB/GYN who helps you understand dense breast tissue and how to do a proper self-exam.
Three types of tissue — fatty, fibrous, and glandular — make up a woman's breasts. These tissues each have a job within the breasts, giving them their size and shape.
Breast density measures fibrous and glandular tissue compared with fatty tissue on a mammogram. Fibrous tissue holds the breasts in place, while glandular tissue is the part that produces milk during pregnancy.
Dense breast tissue means you have more fibroglandular tissue than fatty tissue. This may not seem like a big deal, but it makes reading a mammogram more difficult.
Your breasts change as you age, and you may have dense breasts at one point in life but not at another. Women who are more likely to have dense breasts are younger, pregnant, or breastfeeding, or are taking hormone therapy.
Dense breasts can be a scary diagnosis, but you don’t necessarily have to worry. Dense breast tissue doesn't mean you have cancer — it simply means breast self-exams and mammograms are slightly more complex.
Dense breasts matter because fibroglandular tissue can hide cancer on a mammogram. Fibroglandular tissue is white in the pictures, but so are cancerous tumors. Small tumors can slip through the cracks of fibroglandular tissue on some mammogram reports.
Women with dense breast tissue are also at an increased risk for developing breast cancer.
But just because you have dense breast tissue doesn't mean you'll develop cancer. It just heightens your risk.
A mammogram is a type of X-ray of the breast tissues. It shows the breast structures and tissues so we can see if any abnormalities are present that could indicate cancer. We utilize the breast imaging reporting and data system (BI-RADS) to classify breast tissue into four categories:
These categories tell us how much fibroglandular tissue you have compared to fatty breast tissue. None of these categories mean you have breast cancer.
If your mammogram report says heterogeneously dense or extremely dense, you're more likely to need a repeat mammogram or breast ultrasound so we can evaluate the tissues further.
If we're unable to determine breast changes from dense breast tissue on the mammogram report, Dr. Roberts may recommend a breast ultrasound or breast MRI to rule out cancer.
He also shows you how to accurately perform a self-breast exam with dense breast tissue to ensure you don't miss any abnormal changes.
Call our office in Plano, Texas, today to schedule an appointment for a mammogram or request a consultation using our convenient online booking tool.
