Breast Cancer: Mammographic Signs

00:01 In this section, I want to quickly go over every important screening test.

00:07 Remember please that at some point in time, unfortunately, if a female goes onto develop breast cancer, incidence-wise, remember it’s number one.

00:15 Mortality-wise, it’s number two.

00:17 So even with proper amounts of screening and even with proper medications, it’s still the number two killer of cancer in a female.

00:28 Let’s do a mammography.

00:30 You’re looking for a mass, you’re looking for architectural distortion.

00:35 And you’re looking for calcification.

00:37 What you’re looking at here in your mammography would be one in which – Well, you’ll notice that the anterior portion will be nipple.

00:45 And the one on the right will be normal.

00:48 What may then happen is that if breast cancer was to kick in or was to develop and at some point in time, maybe there might be retraction.

00:56 Oftentimes, that structure of the breast that is retracted on your very right.

01:01 Now, are you picturing this? Are you able to close your eyes and conceptualize what this looks like? The anterior portion would be on the very right and as you move from right to left, you’re moving from the nipple.

01:11 And then in a little bit, I’ll walk you through the pathophysiology or really the clinical anatomy of the breast apparatus.

01:19 And as you move from the nipple, you’re coming into lactiferous sinus, then you’re coming into your major duct, terminal duct and then you go into lobules.

01:26 And then in the very back on your left will be the stroma that’s responsible for holding onto the breast or you have these Cooper's ligaments.

01:34 Remember those in anatomy? The suspensory ligaments that hold on to the breast.

01:39 And when a female gets old enough, then the suspensory ligament becomes weaker and then literally causes ptosis of the breast or sagging breasts.

01:47 You call that a Cooper’s breast.

01:49 Now that you understand the picture of what you’re looking at here on mammography, if there’s retraction of the nipple then on the left it’s kind of showing you that with increased fibrosis.

01:59 In addition, there might be calcification in which the calcium is then coming through the ducts.

02:04 Let’s spend more time here and just because you see calcification though on mammography, which appears as being white, right? It’s always white, the calcium is.

02:13 And it doesn’t always mean breast cancer though and that’s where the boards will trick you.

02:17 But they won’t though, they won’t trick you because you’ll know better.