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Nancy's Chalkboard: blogging and blabbing about breasts and whatever else Nancy fancies

Nancy's Chalkboard Blog

  • Let's Talk: Aren't Health Care Providers Expected to To Discuss Medical Reports With Patients?

    Being the architect of legislation to include a patient’s dense breast tissue, Dr. Cappello responds to a study in JAMA: Study Finds Poor Understandability of Notifications Sent to Women Regarding Breast Density

  • Protecting the Patient-Consumer from Later Stage Cancer: Learning from Connecticut's Breast Density Laws

    Connecticut radiologists, once in opposition to density reporting laws, have demonstrated through its data in clinical settings what has been in the literature for more than two decades. Overwhelming evidence exists that it's now time to include adjunct screening in breast cancer screening guidelines for women with dense breast tissue, leveling the early detection screening field for all and protecting the patient-consumer from missed, delayed and advanced-stage cancer.

  • Shared Decision Making a Fantasy as Task Force Put Women with Dense Breast Tissue at Risk for Undetected Cancers

    Women have a right to access health information that affects them. Appropriate screening, discussed between physician and patient, is critical for women's health. When screening for breast cancer, dense breast tissue is not something to be ignored.

  • Back to the Future with Breast Density

    My legislative advocacy was birthed when my health care providers refused to disclose density to their other patients, claiming it was not the standard of care. My objective was to take the years of information in the medical journals about dense breast tissue to the examining room, giving every patient an opportunity to become equal partners in their breast screening surveillance which could materially affect their life.

Are You Dense? Fact #1: Breast density is one of the strongest predictors of the failure of mammography screening to detect cancer.

Are You Dense? Fact #2: Two-thirds of pre-menopausal women and 40% of post-menopausal women have dense breast tissue.

Are You Dense? Fact #3: Adding more sensitive tests to mammography significantly increase detection of invasive cancers that are small and node negative.

Are You Dense? Fact #4: American College of Radiology describes women with "Dense Breast Tissue" as having a higher than average risk of Breast Cancer.

Are You Dense? Fact #5: While a mammogram detects 98% of cancers in women with fatty breasts, it finds only 48% in women with dense breasts.

Are You Dense? Fact #6: A woman at average risk and a woman at high risk have an EQUAL chance of having their cancer masked by mammogram.

Are You Dense? Fact #7: Women with dense breasts who had breast cancer have a four times higher risk of recurrence than women with less-dense breasts.

Are You Dense? Fact #8: A substantial proportion of Breast Cancer can be attributed to high breast density alone.

Are You Dense? Fact #9: Cancer turns up five times more often in women with extremely dense breasts than those with the most fatty tissue.

Are You Dense? Fact #10: There are too many women who are unaware of their breast density, believe their “Happy Gram” when it reports no significant findings and are at risk of receiving a later stage cancer diagnosis.