By Lillie Shockney, R.N., M.A.S.
Nov 19, 2012
Women continue to worry a great deal about their breast density. They wonder how dense their breast tissue is and if it’s so dense that it’s going to make it difficult for mammography to find breast cancer when it is still treatable.
Some women have assumed, and understandably so, that their dense breast tissue could result in a breast cancer having long years to get established in the breast and then travel to other organs because of it was camouflaged on a mammogram.
Well, there is good news. A recent study published by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (August 2012) has proven that breast density does not influence breast cancer mortality rates. That is, whereas women with significant breast density have a higher risk of developing breast cancer, they don’t have a higher risk of dying from it.
As a separate discovery while conducting this research, however, these researchers did note that low density among obese women does result in an increase in mortality. Why? The scientists hypothesize that it’s because breast tissue is made up primarily of fat, and fat tissue is an environment that breast cancer cells can thrive and progress in.
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