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Dr. Jean Warner, Director, The Tyanna O'Brien Center for Women's Imaging at Mercy

Survey Indicates Most Women Don't Know Their Breast Density, An Important Risk Factor For Breast Cancer

A recent online survey found that most women don't know their breast density, despite the potential for an increased cancer risk.

Many women don't know this statistic even though they get regular breast exams.

"It's not something that you can feel or that your doctor can feel upon physical examination. It has to be determined on the X-ray image," said radiologist Dr. Jean Warner, Director of The Tyanna O'Brien Center for Women's Imaging at Mercy.

According to Dr. Warner, knowing your breast density is very important. Fat shows up as a dark color on a mammogram, while dense breast tissue shows up white -- the same as cancer -- making the disease difficult to detect.

"Some patients have extremely dense breast tissue where the entire breast looks (white), and in those cases, it is tough to find cancer on the mammogram," Dr. Warner said.

She added that there's growing evidence that women with dense breast tissue have a higher risk of developing breast cancer, yet a recent survey of women over the age of 40 found that 95 percent of women didn't know their breast density.

The survey of 599 women was conducted by Harris Interactive for U-Systems, a company that develops breast ultrasound systems.

It found that 90 percent didn't know breast density increases their risk of developing breast cancer, and it found that doctors have spoken to less than one in 10 women about the effects of breast density on early detection.

"So, we need to get the message out to women that they should investigate what the density of their breast tissue is so they can speak to their doctors about it … because there might be other things you should be doing if you have dense breast tissue," Dr. Warner said, such as ultrasound or a breast MRI.

To view Dr. Warner's interview on WBAL-TV11's "Woman's Doctor" program regarding breast density, click this link: http://www.wbaltv.com/womansdoctor/23978927/detail.html