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Dr. Jennifer Engels, Breast Imaging Specialist, explains why it is more difficult to find breast cancer in women with dense breast tissue.
Dr. Engels:
Basically, when we are talking about dense tissue, we are talking about all this white tissue. It is just normal glandular tissue and ductal tissue which is part of a normal breast, and some women just happen to have more of this white glandular tissue than the grayer fatter tissue, and the problem is it is hard for us to see cancer because cancer is also white and it can be camouflaged, hiding behind this normal white ductal tissue. So in patients with a lot of this white tissue, which is what we call dense tissue, we have a more difficult time finding breast cancer on mammograms at an earlier stage.