Invenia™  ABUS – Dense Breast Screening

About 40% of women have dense breast tissue. And for these women, mammograms alone may not be enough to find breast cancer. South Central Regional Medical Center now offers Invenia™ ABUS, the only breast cancer screening technology FDA-approved for detection in women with dense breast tissue.

What does Breast Density mean? Breasts are made of fat and breast tissue. Some women have more fat than breast tissue while others have more breast tissue than fat. When there is more breast tissue the breast is considered dense. On a mammogram dense tissue looks white. Since masses or lumps also appear white on a mammogram, a suspicious lump may be masked by the dense breast tissue.

Dense breast tissue is also linked with an increase in the risk of developing breast cancer. Women with extremely dense breast tissue have a 4 to 6 times greater risk of developing breast cancer than women who do not have dense breast tissue. Invenia™ ABUS helps physicians look differently at dense breast tissue.

Breast density is determined by the radiologist who reads your mammogram and classifies the density into one of four categories. Your doctor will tell you if you have dense breasts based on your mammogram’s classification on the density scale.