What Does It Mean to Have Dense Breasts?
(Play Video-L) The NY Cancer Resource Alliance gives loving tribute to Dr. Nancy Cappello, co-founder of "Are You Dense" and chief crusader of the mission to bring change to the protocols and standards of Early Detection. Her organization embarked in a global advocacy project to win legislation for dense breast scanning and to bring awareness to the need for better technologies and imaging interpretation. Today, her loving husband Joe continues her unending fight to save more lives through awareness, advocacy and her crusade for change. (Also see below to read her full story in our ORG SPOTLIGHT section) |
URGENCY IN THE EVOLUTION OF TECHNOLOGY & IMAGING STRATEGIES FOR DENSE BREASTS
Written by: Dr. Robert L. Bard
Hybrid imaging refers to combining diagnostic modalities to assess disease and monitor therapy. A useful combination of options is the tumor vessel flow density to assess aggression and treatment progress. Similarly, tissue elastography is useful for border detection of malignant masses.
The clinical utility of 4D image acquisition is:
1. Automated electronics sampling of the tissue volume in real time
2. 200-300 images of a data set are generated in 5-15 seconds
3. The process is User-INDEPENDENT unlike standard 2D ultrasound which is highly user dependent
4. The data set for serial studies uses fixed parameters so that treatment efficacy may be rapidly compared
Dense Breasts: Answers to Commonly Asked Questions A: Nearly half of all women age 40 and older who get mammograms are found to have dense breasts. Breast density is often inherited, but other factors can influence it. Factors associated with lower breast density include increasing age, having children, and using tamoxifen. Factors associated with higher breast density include using postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy and having a low body mass index. Q: Are dense breasts a risk factor for breast cancer? A: Yes, women with dense breasts have a higher risk of breast cancer than women with fatty breasts, and the risk increases with increasing breast density. This increased risk is separate from the effect (false negatives) of dense breasts on the ability to read a mammogram. |
ORG SPOTLIGHT:
“ARE YOU DENSE”- FORGING A SMART, NEW PROTOCOL IN BREAST CANCER SCREENING
By: Joe Cappello of “Are You Dense” (areyoudense.org & areyoudenseadvocacy.org) | Edited by: Carmen R. DeWitt
Our advocacy work led us to reach out to our legislators, explore the current insurance coverages and eventually got our first win with a disclosure law in 2009, making Connecticut the first state in the nation to pass legislation making it a law for Docs to disclose to the patient if they have dense breast tissue. This says that if a woman has dense breasts, she'd must be told by her physician that she's got dense breast there's alternative screening. This includes options like an ultrasound or an MRI. Also, two years ago, ‘Are You Dense Advocacy, Inc.’ was instrumental in passing the first national dense breast disclosure law. We are now working with Sen. Feinstein to enact this legislation.
FORGING A NATIONAL MOVEMENT
It used to be that when you Googled ‘dense breast’, there was next to NO information available. But over time, as we started making ‘noise’ about this issue, more and more interest began coming our way. As news broke of our ‘touchdown’ with our state, it wasn’t long before other states started asking how we did it. Before long, Nancy started helping women across the country and the next state was Texas. She helped the girl down in Texas to get legislation passed – and next came our public educational website for the many others who definitely need this.
Nancy quit her job with the state of Connecticut and started doing “Are You Dense” full-time and she helped pass 38 different laws in 38 states. It's a tremendous amount of work to pass laws on a state by state basis, but she was really the catalyst. Nancy was the person behind and the voice and the face behind dense breast tissue. As outreach work goes, we created a major effort around what we've done now. Manufacturers are supporting our interest as far as the expansion of full breast automated ultrasound and others came into existence (and are doing quite well) because of our efforts.
* For more information about Nancy and Joe Cappello's national mission, visit: areyoudense.org and areyoudenseadvocacy.org
From the Surgical Side... "THEY MADE A LAW REQUIRING DENSE BREAST SCANNING" In New Jersey, we have the Breast Density Law that literally says women with very dense breasts should be getting more than just screening mammography and the insurance companies have to cover. And that can either be an ultrasound or an MRI, but women over 40 do not usually like the idea of getting an MRI and gadolinium IV each year. Instead, adding ultrasound allows you to scan the whole breast and see through the very dense breast tissue. Ultrasounds will also work to the full depth of the breath straight down to the chest wall, so that if there are any masses, it will see right through the fibers and thick tissue- not limited like mammogram. Even extremely dense breast patients should get a mammogram because it also shows things like calcifications-- something that the average ultrasound tech may find harder to capture. Women with extremely dense breast definitely can benefit from added surveillance because as your breasts get more dense, mammography can miss things. Due to a higher volume of dense tissue, a little tumor can hide underneath fibercystic tissue making it very hard to see in mammography, even with tomosynthesis or the 3d mammo. By: Dr. Stephen Chagares | https://www.drchagares.com |
Elastography is used worldwide since 2010 for cancer detection because cancer is hard (inelastic) and benign tissue is soft (elastic). This quantitative technology for cancer detection has not been adapted for breast density analysis to date.
REFERENCES
1) GE.com/ Setting A New Standard for Breast Care: GE Healthcare Introduces Invenia ABUS 2.0 https://www.ge.com/news/press-releases/setting-new-standard-breast-care-ge-healthcare-introduces-invenia-abus-20#_ftn1
1) Breast density and risk- European Radiology 31:4839-4847, 2021
JOSEPH J. CAPPELLO married Nancy Marcucci, in 1974 and the story began. Joe is the co-founder and executive director of Are You Dense, and Are You Dense Advocacy- in January of 2019 after Nancy’s passing from treatment related bone marrow cancer (MDS). His passion is to continue Nancy’s legacy by pursuing the goal that they set in 2004; that not one woman would die from a late stage breast cancer due to dense breast tissue. In 2009, Joe and Nancy championed the first in the nation breast density inform law in the State of Connecticut (and now, 36 States have breast density legislation).
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