Widower completes wife’s dying wish with new mammogram law
Like 40 percent of women, Cheri Rauth had dense breast tissue. Yearly mammograms could not spot the cancer that was forming inside her body; it was not detected until she had an ultrasound and biopsy.
Bill Rauth, Cheri’s husband explains
IRISH radiologists and cancer screening specialists must now engage in a discussion on how to introduce breast density reporting protocols.
Irish women should be informed of their breast density levels. It would allow us to make informed choices about our breast screening and health.
Radiologists can give you this information with your mammogram results, but they don’t WHY? Breastcheck currently refuse to disclose breast density WHY?
Breast density is like mammogram’s dirty little secret. Half of women over 40 have no idea that their “normal” mammogram might not be normal at all. We are looking for a snowball in a snowstorm! You see, cancer is white, and dense tissue is white. So, dense breast tissue can overlap with cancers, masking them from view; in fact, we miss up to 50 percent of cancers in dense breasts.(Kolb, et al.) Secondly, dense tissue is the part of the breast that gets cancer, not fat, so there is a higher risk of getting cancer for women with dense breasts. Density level 4 women have five times the cancer risk as a density level 1. (NEJM)
These protocols are no longer acceptable to Irish women.
Being Dense 