How do radiologists read mammograms

This is important because of the emotive and potentially disturbing consequences of a significant finding on a mammogram. Unnecessary recalls cost money, do not add value and upset the patient and her physician. It has become politically correct to question the value of mammography. Most of the adverse publicity has a single source out of The Cochrane Collaboration and from one author.

The emotion around the disease and its appeal in the lay literature then fuels the publicity which detracts from the scientifically proven value of early diagnosis, improved survival and cosmetically acceptable treatment. A review of the ongoing debate in this regard is out of the scope of this website.

Suffice to say that in many respects this is an unfortunate debate driven by people who are not breast imagers and it detracts time, money, effort and attention from the real issue - finding a cure. This debate has many features in common with the infamous debate surrounding autism and MMR vaccination.

Please Note: You can also scroll through stacks with your mouse wheel or the keyboard arrow keys. Updating… Please wait. Unable to process the form. Check for errors and try again. Thank you for updating your details.

Log In. Sign Up. Become a Gold Supporter and see no ads. Log in Sign up. Articles Cases Courses Quiz. About Recent Edits Go ad-free. Edit article. View revision history Report problem with Article. Citation, DOI and article data. Gaillard, F. Reference article, Radiopaedia. Approach , Imaging Technology , Radiography. URL of Article. There is typically no special type of care following a mammogram. However, your health care provider may give you additional instructions depending on your specific health condition.

The radiologist will send the report to your doctor and be a resource in creating an action plan if needed. In the United States, approximately 5 to 15 percent of women are called back for additional imaging. Additional images might be another mammogram or a different imaging method, such as ultrasound or MRI.

The findings of this additional imaging are usually benign, meaning the changes are not caused by cancer. The majority of women will have benign changes in their breasts caused by hormones or the aging process. Through yearly mammograms, these changes can be tracked and monitored. Previous images will be used as a resource to monitor any changes in the breast and flag suspicious changes.

Your health care provider should perform a clinical breast exam at your annual physical, and you can practice breast self-awareness by knowing what is normal for your breast and being able to identify small changes immediately. You should perform breast self-exams at least once a month at the same time frame in your menstrual cycle.

Women who are at an increased risk of breast cancer should talk with their health care providers about starting mammography screening earlier than 40, having additional tests such as breast ultrasound or MRI , or having more frequent exams. Eight out of 10 women who are diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history; being proactive about your breast exam is a critical step in your overall health.

The main advantage of having them read immediately by the radiologist on site is that if the doctor sees anything suspicious, you can get more imaging done right away — close-up mammograms or an ultrasound. For more information, see our section on Getting Your Test Results. The radiologist also may use computer-aided detection and diagnosis, or CAD, to help zero in on any suspicious areas on the mammogram.

If you had film-screen mammography, the doctor first would feed your films into a special machine that can convert them into digital images. If you had digital mammography, the images already are in digital format.

The CAD software analyzes the images and any areas of concern are highlighted with markers on the screen. This can be useful in guiding the radiologist to check those areas more closely. CAD was approved for use by the U. Food and Drug Administration in Still, whether or not it makes the interpretation of mammograms more accurate is unclear. According to the American Cancer Society, some studies have shown that CAD can help find cancers that doctors otherwise might have missed.