my mother has just been diagnosed invasive ductal carcinoma. She had a mammogram one year ago, and it was normal. A year later, it is cancer. Anyone has any information on thisi?
2007-10-11 02:34:52 · 3 answers · asked by grandmotherx41979 2 in Health ➔ Diseases & Conditions ➔ Cancer
Mammography is just a screen for cancer. The way that radiologists find early cancer on mammograms is to look for masses and for microcalcifications.
Unfortunately, mammography is an imperfect screen. In about 10 to 15% of cases, the tumors don't show up on mammograms. That is why breast self examination in addition to mammography saves lives--women are able to find masses that the mammograms don't detect.
Also, some tumors just grow really rapidly. In your mother's case, the tumor could have been too small to be seen on the mammogram from a year ago.
2007-10-12 07:34:50 · answer #1 · answered by wlitan 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There is a fair bit of information about breast cancer available on the internet - just have a look (e.g. see the wiki site below).
Unfortunately, it's not that uncommon for women to have a breast cancer that develops over the intervening time between screens. It just reflects that we are screening early and trying to find the disease, and that it grows over a period of time from undetectable to a detectable size over several months.
2007-10-11 10:13:16 · answer #2 · answered by Orinoco 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
same happened to me. mammo came back clean, about 8 months later i found a lump. it was cancer.
2007-10-12 00:06:27 · answer #3 · answered by barb 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋