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Certain women should always ask for digital mammograms.
That's the take-home message from new research conducted by researchers, including two University of Iowa Health Care radiologists--Laurie Fajardo, MD, and JeongMi Park, MD.
Fajardo was the UI site principal investigator for the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center and Park was a collaborating investigator for a landmark 2005 study that compared digital to film mammography for all women. In that original study, 33 U.S. centers enrolled more than 49,000 women and determined the breast cancer status of more than 42,000.
In their latest research, the trial group decided to re-analyze the original findings by looking more closely at subgroups of women. The study evaluated the mammograms of the 42,000 women.
"We were trying to figure out which factor (among menopausal status, age, and breast density) was most important," says Fajardo, MD, a professor and head of the Department of Radiology at UI Hospitals and Clinics.
To do that, investigators compared the accuracy of digital versus film mammograms in 10 different subgroups of women, looking at combinations of the three factors.
"It turns out that no single factor was most important," Fajardo says. "Digital mammography is substantially better for pre- and peri-menopausal women under age 50 with dense breasts."
Having established the "digital advantage" for these women, the investigators suggested that if a mammogram report doesn't include information on breast density, women should ask their doctors or mammogram technologists for that information.
--Tom Moore
Like a digital camera
In digital mammography, x-ray film is replaced by solid-state detectors that convert x-rays into electrical signals. The detectors are like those found in digital cameras, and the electrical signals produce breast images viewable on a computer screen. The denser the breast tissue, the more difficult it is to detect breast cancer on a mammogram because dense tissue shows up as white on a mammogram and cancer shows up as white, too, Fajardo says. "Older women tend to have less dense breasts than younger women, but not always," she says. |
