Episode 9: “The Must-Knows of Dense Breasts and Cancer Screening”

“..it’s quite common—about 40% of women over 40 have dense breasts. But there ar risks to having dense breasts. The most important being that cancers can hide in normal dense tissue.”-Dr. Paula Gordon

In this episode, Rebecca sits down with Dr. Paula Gordon and Jennie Dale to talk about breasts. Dense breasts to be exact. We discuss why women should know whether they have dense breasts or not, and what to do with that information. Listeners might be surprised to learn how breast cancer screening differs across Canada, and be delighted to learn what research says they should do if they discover that they have dense breasts.

Links to resources mentioned in this episode:

• Dense Breasts Canada
• My Breast Screening
• Failing Canadian Women (report)

Guest biographies:

Dr. Paula Gordon is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of British Columbia. In the 1980’s her research on ultrasound-guided breast biopsies led to it becoming a standard of care worldwide. This procedure enabled accurate diagnosis of breast masses, which had previously required surgery and allowed women to forgo surgery for non-cancerous abnormalities. Her research in the early 1990’s was the first to show that ultrasound could find cancers missed on mammograms. This has led to a paradigm change in the management of screening women with dense breasts that began in the USA in 2009, but is now spreading to Canada, the UK, Australia and Europe.

Jennie Dale is the Executive Director of Dense Breast Canada. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2014. Mammogram and tomosynthesis did not detect her cancer, instead it was detected by ultrasound. Inspired by the successful advocacy efforts of American organizations, “areyoudense.org” and “densebreast-info.org,” Jennie co-founded Dense Breast Canada with Michelle DiTomaso in 2017 and has teamed up with breast cancer survivors nationwide to raise awareness of the risks of dense breasts. Together, over the past four years, they have successfully advocated for changes in policy in many Canadian provinces.