You see, like Cappello, 40 percent of women also have dense breast tissue. And dense breast tissue often acts as a mask that prevents doctors from being able to detect cancer through mammograms.
So why is this?
In general, cancer appears white on a mammogram. And so do dense breasts. As a result, it’s difficult to actually see cancer in order to detect it. This is why mammograms are thought to miss cancer in EVERY OTHER CASE when a woman has dense breasts.
This is where ultrasounds come into play.
Some research has shown that a combination of both a mammogram and ultrasound is the best bet when it comes to detecting cancer in women with dense breast tissue. That said, ultrasound alone isn’t recommended because it may not detect some cancers that a mammogram would detect. In addition, ultrasounds can also give results that are not cancer, leading to unnecessary biopsies.
So just what is an ultrasound?
According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), ultrasound, (which is also called sonography) is a painless and radiation-free test that operates by way of sound waves. First, gel is applied to the outside of the breast. Then, a device called a transducer is used to examine the tissue inside of the breast. This device operates by giving off sound waves and picking up echoes from the sound waves when they hit and bounce off of tissues in the body. These echoes are then turned into the image that doctors see.