Laurie Margolies, MD, director of breast imaging at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, led the study. It included nearly 300 women who had a digital mammogram as well as a separate, unrelated CT scan within a year of their breast cancer screening.
Roughly 42 percent of the women’s mammograms showed calcium deposits in the breast arteries. By comparing the mammography results to the CT scans, the investigators found about 70 percent of the women with breast artery calcification also had calcium deposits in their heart arteries, regardless of age.
Among women younger than 60 specifically, 83 percent who had breast artery calcification also had calcium deposits in heart arteries.
“By adding no cost, no radiation and very little time, we can find calcification in the vessels,” Dr. Margolies told HealthDay. “This is potentially practice-changing in how radiologists read and report mammography. It’s a revolutionary way to assess risk.”
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