Although they are not perfect, mammograms are the best method to find breast changes that cannot be felt.

Mammograms are known to  pick up 80-90% of cancers.  This leaves 10-20% of cancers that will not be seen. The detection rate drops dramatically in women with dense breasts to only 40-50% of cancers picked up on a mammogram.  This is not a good detection rate by any means.

Mammograms have limits that include:

• Mammograms may not help a woman with a fast growing cancer that has already spread to other parts of her body before being found.

• False negatives can happen, although they don’t happen often. Younger women are more likely to have a false negative mammogram than are older women.

• The dense breasts of younger women make breast cancers harder to find in mammograms.
  

• False positives can happen and are more common in younger women.

As a younger woman, between 40 and 50 years old, what can you do to get the most accurate screening?

First, find out your breast density.

If you have dense breasts, you need to be especially vigilant to make sure that if you do have breast cancer, you increase the odds of it being found early.

Ask your doctor to send you for a screening breast ultrasound when you have your annual mammogram.

Be sure to go to a facility that has digital mammograms.

Source: Women’sHealth.gov

According to the findings of a new study done by researchers at the University of North Carolina less than half the breast cancer survivors surveyed in the study were ever asked about their personal preference for surgery prior to beginning treatment.

Their surgeons did not explain to them that they had surgical options. They could have either a full mastectomy or breast-conserving lumpectomy.

“We found that breast cancer survivors had fairly major gaps in their knowledge about their surgical options, including  the implications for recurrence and survival,” said study lead author Dr. Clara Lee, an associate professor of surgery and director of surgical research at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill.

Dr. Lee and her colleagues sent surveys to 746 women who had undergone surgery for stage one or stage two breast cancer at one of four medical centers: the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston; the University of California, San Francisco; and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Of  the 440 respondents, less than half (about 46 percent) knew that local recurrence risk is higher after breast-conserving surgery (lumpectomy) than after mastectomy, and only about 56 percent of women knew that survival rates are equivalent for both surgical options.

Other information that came to light in the study revealed that women who said they preferred mastectomy were less likely to have treatment that was in accordance with their goals. Lee said this was probably because patients reported that their doctors were more likely to discuss breast conservation therapy and its advantages than mastectomy.

Many women did not remember being asked for their preference  between the surgical options available to them.

The fact that less than half (48.6 percent) of the patients recalled being asked their preference was particularly concerning to Lee.”It would be one thing if we were talking about decisions for which there is clearly a superior treatment, such as treatment for an inflamed gallbladder,” Lee said. “In this case, it’s reasonable and actually better for the surgeon to make a recommendation. But here we’re talking about a decision where there is no medically right answer, and it really depends on the patient’s preference. In that situation, it makes sense to ask the patient what she prefers.”

Another breast cancer surgeon cautioned that the retrospective nature of the study (asking women to recall past events) “Clearly there are deficits in knowledge, but what we don’t know for sure is if that’s because the surgeon failed to convey this information, or the surgeon failed to convey it in a way that the patient could understand, or the patient has simply forgotten,” said Dr. Leslie Montgomery, chief of breast surgery at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City.

“If anything, I’m actually surprised that the numbers were as good as they were,” Montgomery added. “There’s often a big difference between what a woman is told and what she actually absorbs at a time when she is so emotionally distressed.”

“As surgeons, we really need to make sure we convey the proper information to a woman at what is probably one of the most stressful times in her life,” Montgomery said.

SOURCE: January 2012, Journal of the American College of Surgeons

Bay Area Young Survivors (BAYS) is an organization run entirely by volunteers.

BAYS mission… to support young women in the San Fransisco Bay Area who are living with breast cancer.

BAYS is a grassroots organization with a tiny budget and no staff, just dedicated volunteers making it happen.

BAYS began in 2004 when two of the co-founders couldn’t find a support group in the Bay Area to address the specific issues faced by young women.

BAYS is open to all survivors – from the newly diagnosed, to those battling recurrent or metastatic disease, to long-term survivors. BAYS is a diverse and compassionate group of women, diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 45.

Many of the women who are part of BAYS were misdiagnosed, told they were “too young” to have cancer. Many of them found their own cancer because they were too young for routine mammograms.

Through monthly support group meetings, an online network, and community-building events, BAYS members share information, experiences, and resources. BAYS goal is to break the isolation of living with breast cancer by providing a community built on compassion, understanding, hope, and inspiration.

In BAYS support group and online community, BAYS members share some issues that are common to all people with cancer and others that are unique to young women with breast cancer.

Since BAYS founding, member volunteers have continued to try to offer things not found anywhere else, such as free childcare during support group meetings (so that young moms can attend) and  “happy hours” with a trained sexologist to discuss how cancer treatment affects sexuality.

For more information, visit…http://www.baysnet.org/

Add another reason to the already long list of reasons why teenagers shouldn’t drink.

The most recent reason not to drink as a teenager has to do with teenage girls who have a family history of breast cancer or of breast lesions that sometimes lead to breast cancer. These girls already have a higher risk of developing those lesions when they get older and now a recent study  indicates the risk of what’s called benign breast disease rises even more if the teenagers drink.

Dr. Graham Colditz, of  Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, conducted a study, which appears in the journal Cancer and was supported by the National Institutes of Health. After reviewing data on more than 6,000 girls followed from ages 9 to 15 to ages 18 to 27. His conclusion…teenage girls with a family history of breast cancer and breast disease clearly should not drink.

While the information in this study is a critical piece of prevention that can easily be put into practice, how do we get this information to teenage girls? Are teenage girls receptive to hearing about breast health measures that will set them apart from other teens?

What is the answer? Curriculum that deals with breast health is now apart of health courses in some high schools across the U.S. Will teenage girls identify with information presented in a school setting or does this information need to be shared on a more personal level? Does it need to be a discussion that a mother needs to have with her teenage daughter if she is part of a family with a history of breast cancer?

Given the high incidence of breast cancer and breast lesions, there are millions of teenage girls who come from families with a history of breast diseases.  If you have a teenage daughter and a family history of breast cancer, isn’t it time to have the don’t drink talk?

Some months ago I wrote about breast cancer survivors with genetic mutations sharing results with their children. This post is a follow up to that article.

A recent study of parents who underwent genetic testing for mutations finds that most parents do share their findings with their children. The results of the report were shared in the online January 9th issue of journal Cancer

Dr. Angela Bradbury, of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and her colleagues reported that twenty-nine percent of the parents tested were found to have a BRCA gene mutation associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.

Many of the parents in the study tended to share their genetic test results, be they positive or negative, with at least one of their children. Of the 505 children, 334 (66 percent) were informed about the findings of their parents’ tests.

Parents were most  likely to share their test results with older children. Yet, about half of children ages 10 to 13, and some children even younger were told about the results of thew genetic testing. The researchers also found that parents were more likely to tell their children about negative test results, especially  if the child was a girl.

In general, most of the children were not upset when their parents’ shared their genetic test results. However, as would be expected,they were more likely to be upset when a genetic mutation was detected.

Children younger than ten tended to be more upset than older children.