Dawn of digital mammography?

Filed in archive Diagnostics on September 16, 2005

The New England Journal of Medicine reports that digital mammography is more accurate than film mammography in certain groups:

Compared with standard mammograms, which are recorded on film, computer-based digital mammograms are more accurate for more than half the women who get the breast cancer screenings, a large, new study finds.

Younger women with dense breast tissue, those under 50 and those who are premenopausal would benefit from having digital mammograms, the researchers said. . .

. . . "The kinds of cancer digital [mammography] found and film missed were important cancers --- the kind that kill women," said lead author Dr. Etta D. Pisano, a professor of radiology and biomedical engineering at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. "We don't know for sure we saved their lives, but it was important to find those cancers."

For now, there is no mortality benefit for digital over film mammograms. The important point is that mammograms are recommended routinely after the age of 40 - either digital or film.