When to start having mammograms
At what age should women start having regular mammograms?
in fact mammograms are the only proven
method for breast cancer detection and
screening I would recommend that this be
done in women above 40
the reason being that when you're less
than 40 abreast extremely dense and
essentially doing a mammogram is pretty
useless because a mammogram shows up
dense tissue as a white patch and
essentially when we do screening we're
looking out for white patches that could
be cancer so in a very dense breast we
don't see that normality so breast
screening should be carried out 40 and
above and 40 to 50 every year that's the
guidelines and after after 50 every two
years so for women less than 40 will
recommend ultrasound screening
ultrasound is a non-invasive imaging
method it has no radiation involved
extremely safe and this should be done
on a yearly basis when you're after to
in after 20 years of age if you've got
very strong family history of cancer
let's say I've got a mother or
first-degree relative ante cousins with
breast cancer at a young age so 50 45 50
and below I will recommend starting
mammogram screening slightly earlier
possibly about 35 years of age the other
modality would be MRI breasts and mr
breast is actually the it's actually
very rare sensitive in picking out
breast cancers and then young breast
very useful in addition to ultrasound to
detect any lesions so ultrasounds are
extremely sensitive as well for
detecting cancers but they're also very
sensitive for detecting non cancers so
it's ultrasound picks up modules such as
cysts fibroadenomas and benign lesions
and it helps to characterize ups as well
so on ultrasound scan you and I we're
gonna see a patient for lung I can't
quite confident you look at lump and say
this is not likely to be cancer or this
is slightly to be concern requires about
C so no I would say the right useful
tool in fact out in the fields when we
go out we tend to use ultrasound only in
a remote areas to screen for breast
cancer so a very useful tool
