According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, 1 in 8 women in the United States will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. In 2022, an estimated 287,500 women were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and this year, 43,550 women will die of breast cancer in the United States alone.
Mammograms are the screenings most often recommended by doctors in the United States to detect breast cancer. However, they do have risks. The most significant risks are radiation exposure and overdiagnosis. Mammograms use x-rays, a form of ionizing radiation that we want to avoid whenever possible. Because of advances in technology, mammography has become so sensitive that it’s able to pick up a wide variety of anomalies—some of which may not be cancer, some of which may be cancers that may not progress (such as the “stage 0” cancer known as ductal carcinoma in situ), and some of which may regress on their own.
