"Treat the disease, you win some, you lose some. Treat the patient, you always win."
~Patch Adams~



Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Dense breast tissue doesn't add cancer risk, study shows

Generally, when I post an article like this another study comes out within a week with opposite findings. However, because I know this is a topic of interest to nearly all women, I'm sharing with you an article from this morning's edition of USAToday.com.  I was considered to have dense breast tissue when I was younger because I never had a child, and because of a history of breast cancer in my family (I lost a maternal aunt at age 42 to the disease in 1960, a maternal first cousin at age 56 in 2004) I began having mammograms at age 35.  By the time a study had come out that mammograms in women under 40 with dense breast tissue were nearly useless ---- I had already had two mammograms.  In a perfect world (which is likely not to exist as long as insurance companies are involved in our health care) we would be getting MRIs of our breasts (found to be more accurate in detecting problems) instead of mammograms, but I don't see insurance coverage for that any time soon. 

I'm sorry my posting has been so sporadic the last few weeks, my back has been acting up (hard to sit at the computer), trying to learn the new computer (which is problematic when you can't sit at it for very long at a stretch) and a lack of good articles to share with you (often happens in the summer) have made for a perfect storm of very little blog posting.  Enjoy your week!