Fasting is not necessary on the day of the test.
Finding Breast cancer early reduces your risk of dying from the disease by 25-30% or more. Women should begin having mammograms at age 50 or earlier if they are at high risk.
Mammography is a fast procedure (about 20 mins), and discomfort is minimal for most women. The procedure is safe: there is only a tiny amount of radiation exposure from a mammogram.
Try to get a digital mammogram. A digital mammogram is recorded on a computer so that doctors can enlarge certain sections to look at them more closely.
Make sure that your past results are available to whoever will be looking at your new results.
If you are at high risk of breast Cancer, have a strong family history of breast or ovarian cancer, or have had radiation treatment to the chest in the past, it is recommended that you start having annual mammograms at a younger age. Discuss with your doctor.
However, mammograms can still miss 20% of breast cancers that are simply not visible using this technique. Other important tools- such as breast self-examination, clinical breast examination, ultrasound or MRI- can be used as complementary tools.
Once you find a facility you have confidence in, try to go there year after year so that you can be followed up.
Since these show up on mammograms and interfere with the test results.
About 10% of women who have a mammogram will require more tests. Only 8-10% of these will need a biopsy and about 80% of these biopsies will turn out not to be cancer.
The writer, Dr. Rashmi Sharma, is Senior Consultant Surgical Oncology (Breast Services) at, Narayana Superspeciality Hospital in Gurugram