To Your Health: Breast density can impact screening practices

As we touched on last week, regular mammograms are a front-line defense against breast cancer, because they can detect it before it grows enough to develop a lump that can be felt during a breast self-exam or at a visit with your care team.

But another important advantage of mammograms is their ability to let you know whether or not you have especially dense breast tissue. Knowing that your breasts are denser than usual is meaningful, because with dense breasts, mammogram might not be enough to detect cancer.

Dense breast tissue is not only common; it’s normal. Density of breast tissue varies from woman to woman and can be affected by genetics, age and health history.

Breasts are composed of two types of tissue.

Fibroglandular tissue is made up of milk glands and ducts, and the support