Doctors usually tell patients that regular mammograms are the best way for an earlydetectionof breast cancer, but Nancy Cappello's story recommends that women may want to ask more questions.
For a decade now, Cappello undergoes a mammogram every year
According to Cappello, she has no risk determinants that she knew of or first degree relatives with breast cancer before, and she did her breast exams as well.
So that is why she was surprised when, after weeks of being told that her mammogram result was normal, her doctor felt a mass. It was invasive breast cancer.
Cappello, who was diagnosed in 2004 at age 51, said that she doesn't get why the mammogram wasn't able todetect her cancer
Her doctors told her that it was because she had dense breast tissue, which makes detecting cancer more challenging.
More than 40 percent of women have dense breast tissues but many are never informed that the type of breast tissue they have can make a cancer cell harder to identify on a mammogram.
According to the American College of Radiology and the Society of Breast Imaging, a woman's breasts consist of fibrous, fatty and glandular tissue. Shape and size don't determine density -- breasts are thought-out to be dense if a woman has a lot of fibrous or glandular tissue, but not much fat. Doctors tend to categorize breast density using a four-category scale.
As per Dr. Regina Hooley, an associate professor of diagnostic radiology at the Yale School of Medicine,told CBS News that with a mammogram, attempting to detect a tumor in a dense breast is like trying to find a snowball in a snowstorm.
She said that the dense breast tissue emerges as white on the mammogram andCancers also appear as white spots on the mammogram.
A dense breast tissue is typical in younger women, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists noted that women having dense breasts have a "modestly increased" threats of developing a breast cancer.
However, the group does not suggesthabitual use of further tests beyond screening mammography in women with dense breasts who are asymptomatic and have no addedthreat factors. The organization does suggest that health care providers abide state laws that may require them to advise women of their breast density based on a mammogram report.
