The Painful and the Palpable
Four o’clock and you are winding down the day. The mammography technologist brings you a mammogram of a 41-year-old woman with a breast lump. It looks negative. You ask the…
Measuring and Managing Breast Cancer Risk
You’re about to sign off on a negative screening mammogram when her history catches your eye. She’s only 32 years old. Her sister was just diagnosed with breast cancer at…
Finding Cancers in Dense Tissue
A blind date: Things are going well, but really, this person could be a serial killer for all you know. How do you get to know him? Sometimes it’s easy,…
Expanding the Differential Diagnosis: Going Beyond IDC-NOS
So you found the architectural distortion on her screening mammogram. She had a diagnostic workup and you found a small abnormal area, no more than 1 or 2 cm. Ultrasound-guided core…
The Male Breast
A sheepish older guy with a breast lump is in your department. Without even seeing him, you know that the most likely diagnosis is gynecomastia. But let’s make sure that…
Evaluation of Nipple Discharge
She’s a little embarrassed. And she’s more than a little nervous. She saw a spot of blood in her bra. Does she have cancer? Her mammogram last month was normal,…
Calcifications Made Easy
Your children have finally learned to get their own cereal in the morning. But yikes, what is that stuff on the kitchen floor? You start to reach for a paper…
Breast Anatomy and Physiology: Recognizing Normal Changes
A young woman presented with a palpable lump in her right axilla. She was 3 months pregnant and terrified. Her sister had been diagnosed with stage III breast cancer at…
Management of Masses: BI-RADS 2, 3, or 4?
Always a rush in the morning. Time to fix lunch for the kids. Did we go grocery shopping this week? Those grapes don’t look so hot. I think they’ve been…
The Recalled Patient: Now What?
Let’s see. A screening recall. Is it a real finding? It looks kind of ugly on the screening views. The mediolateral oblique (MLO) spot looks fine, but the craniocaudal (CC)…
