Mammos increase breast cancer??????

Might Ask Mammolady?
Dear Denise,

I understand your concern and 25 mammograms are a lot. From what I understand from what I read that the radiation in mammograms are minimal and not to be a concern. Probably Mammolady aka Cindy might shed some light on here. Perhaps an email to her to see what she thinks, in case she misses your question.

Over the years, I have had so many bone scans, ct scans, x-rays and other kinds of scans and radiation (MRI's uses magnets), I still never worry about it. There are things that I don't bother about, as I can't change or do anything about any of it at this late date.

However, you might go 18 months instead of 12 for mammograms in the future. Just a thought.

Best,

Doris

CypressCynthia said:

Well I never had a mammogram
Well I never had a mammogram until the one that diagnosed my initial cancer!

To put things in perspective, a mammogram exposes you to about 0.4 mSv of radiation whereas a full body CT scan exposes you to 20 or more mSv of radiation.
(See: http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Womens_Health_Watch/2010/October/radiation-risk-from-medical-imaging)

Like Doris, I really have never worried about this. My doctor does a PET/CT scan if my markers increase more than 20%, if I am symptomatic, etc. Otherwise, I avoid having a whole body CT scan, if I can, but I don't stress about it either. Lol, I probably have had 8-12 whole body CT's, so mammograms seem like a flea dose of radiation to me ;-).

P.S. A PET scan without a CT does not expose you to radiation, but often both are done together.

And I've had about 15 full body CTs
because of my appendix cancer - not quite full body, but most (Chest/Abdomen/Pelvis), which is tons of radiation. At this point, I've been moved to MRIs, and my frequency of scans is down to every 18 months, instead of every 4-6 months. But you do what you have to do to stay ahead of the known cancer.

Mammos are pretty low doses of radiation. I'm just thinking of cutting back the frequency because of all that I just went through based on a false positive (that would never have been seen in a regular mammo, but was seen in the high resolution 3D mammo.)

However, I'd be singing a different song if I had not been benign.