Less painful mammograms could still be accurate

Breast cancer screenings can help save lives, but some detection methods are painful—mammograms squeeze the breast between two rigid plates. That might put some women off screening—and it might not even be necessary, according to a statement from Sweden’s Lund University.

Researchers at the school looked a more flexible plate as a way to reduce pain during mammography. Doctoral student Magnus Dustler found that decreasing this compression on the center part of the breast by up to 50 percent does not negatively affect the ability to detect cancers.

It also might be possible to use a more flexible breast compression plate in mammograms as a way to reduce pain and even improve accuracy, according to Dustler. The flexible plates allow for more even compression across the breast.

And Dustler’s methods could help solve another problem related to mammograms as they are currently: high false positive recall rates. Measuring pressure points around the breast could reveal more rigid areas of a tumor surrounded by the more malleable regular breast tissue.

"The results indicate that it could be possible to set a threshold value; women who exceed this threshold would undergo additional investigation. However, the method is not yet ready for clinical application," Dustler said in the statement.

Dustler said one of the reasons he hopes this new method of screening catches on is that the mammogram typically used now is not much different from its first iteration in the 1960s.

He and the research team at Lund University said they hope to work on more studies exploring these new mammogram options.