We’ve all heard the “horror” stories of women at a very young age developing breast cancer, and while it is true that this is possible, it is not actually the norm, and does not happen nearly as often as women past 40 or 50 years old getting breast cancer.  However, that doesn’t mean the young women shouldn’t use prudence when looking out for breast cancer. 

Take for example Christina Applegate, only in her mid thirties who recently underwent a double masectomy when breast cancer was discovered in one of her breasts.  It does happen at earlier ages, but usually only if the genetic markers are there or the person has an unusually high likelihood of developing it for lifestyle or environment reasons or something else that may be within control. 

The temptation may be for younger women to ask for mammograms, but in fact, the mammogram is supposedly not all that effective for women who are in their thirties, or sometimes even in their forties, for the simple fact that the breast tissue is simply too dense to be read accurately by the mammogram machine.  This means that more in depth tests would be needed that also happen to be more expensive and may not even be fully covered for younger women by insurance, such as an MRI.

Doctors say that mammograms for younger women are often inaccurate and may be totally useless in many cases since the tissue is just to dense to be read for any suspicious masses or lumps that could be cancerous.  Also, on a mammogram reading, cancer shows up as a white color, but younger women’s breast tissue that is noncancerous also tends to show up in white, making the reading all that much more difficult to accurately decipher, and perhaps causing false postives and false negatives, doing more harm than good. 

They say that a digital mammography may be a better option that a traditional mammogram for younger women since the reading may be a little more dependable.  So, if you are a younger woman and are concerned about the health of your breasts especially if you have a family background that involves breast cancer on the female side of the family, then you can ask your doctor about the digital option and about what your other options are since you are younger and have a more dense breast tissue to look at. 

This entry was posted on October 8, 2008 at 4:22 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Breast Health by Breast News Girl No Comments Yet