United States: Annually, mammograms are being performed on millions of women for the purpose of cancer detection. Approximately, 10 percent of them are asked to come back for further testing.
Between 7 percent and 12 percent of those women get a false-positive diagnosis, meaning the mammogram reveals patterns of cells that look like cancer but are not.
The same study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that those who get a false-positive cancer detection are much less likely ever to come back for their next screen.
What is meant by a false positive mammogram?
These are said to be breast tissue images that are taken by X-rays. These are very important in the screening of cancer but by themselves, they cannot prove or disprove the existence of cancer in a breast.
However, a radiologist is only in a position to distinguish between normal and abnormal breast mass, that is changes that may include developing cancer.
According to Dr. Lynn Dengel, an assistant professor of surgical oncology at the University of Virginia, “Some women have what we call more ‘busy’ breasts, where they have more things that, based on mammography alone, make it harder for a screening radiologist to say, ‘This is all clear,'” as Yahoo life reported.
Women with dense breast tissue, which is more common in young women with low BMI or black ethnicity, can confuse the visibility of cancer on mammograms.
From Dengel’s perspective as well as that of the American Cancer Society, cysts, and prior procedures such as breast biopsies and benign tumors all contribute to making breast tissue indistinct.
These are calcifications, masses, asymmetries, and distortion in the shape, size, or texture of the tissue or the density of the breast tissue. None of these appearing on the mammogram mean you have cancer, but their absence can make it difficult to diagnose the disease in time.
But they can lead to a ‘positive’ mammogram screening for some sort of abnormality that looks like cancer hence requiring other screening.