How helpful are dense-breast right-to-know laws?

A doctor reviews a digital mammogram, pointing to a possible cancer.
Credit: National Cancer Institute.

By Laura Newman, DXS contributor

In a victory for the dense-breast patient movement, Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) signed legislation last week requiring that doctors who discover that women have dense breasts on mammography must inform women that:

§  dense breasts are a risk factor for breast cancer;
§  mammography sees cancer less well in dense breasts than in normal breasts; and
§  women may benefit from additional breast cancer screening.

The California law goes into effect on April 1, 2013. It follows four states (Connecticut, Texas, Virginia, and New York) with similar statutes. All have enjoyed solid bipartisan support. Rarely do naysayers or skeptics speak up.

Young women who are leading the charge often bring lawmakers the story of a young constituent, diagnosed with a very aggressive, lethal cancer that was not shown on film-screen mammography. The Are You Dense? patient advocacy group engages patients on Facebook, where women share their experiences with breast cancer, organize events, and lobby for legislation. Individual radiologists work with the advocacy groups, but many radiology groups and breast surgeons do not endorse these laws.

A Closer Look at Breast Cancer Data

Living in an age when information is viewed as an entitlement, knowledge, and power, many physicians find it hard to argue against a patient’s right to know. Can sharing information be a mistake? Some epidemiologists think so. Otis W. Brawley, MD, FACP, Chief Medical & Scientific Officer, American Cancer Society, says: “I really worry when we legislate things that no one understands. People can get harmed.” Numerous issues have to be worked out, according to Brawley. For one, he explains: “There is no standard way to define density.” Additionally, “even though studies suggest that density increases the risk of cancer, these cancers tend to be the less serious kind, but even that is open to question,” Brawley says. “We in medicine do not know what to do for women who have increased density.”

A study of more than 9,000 women in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute revealed that women with very dense breasts were no more likely to die than similar patients whose breasts were not as dense. “When tumors are found later in more dense breasts, they are no more aggressive or difficult to treat,” says Karla Kerlikowske, MD, study coauthor, and professor of medicine and epidemiologist at the University of California San Francisco. In fact, an increased risk of death was only found in women with the least dense breasts.

The trouble is what is known about dense breasts is murky. Asked whether he backs advising women that dense breasts are a risk factor for breast cancer, Anthony B. Miller, MD, Co-Chair of the Cancer Risk Management Initiative and a member of the Action Council, Canadian Partnership Against Cancer, and lead investigator of the Canadian National Breast Cancer Screening Study, says: “I would be very cautious. The trouble is people want certainty and chances are whatever we find, all we can do is explain.”

Women in their forties, who are most likely to have dense breasts (density declines with age) may want to seek out digital mammography. In studies comparing digital mammography to film-screen mammography in the same women, digital mammography has been shown to improve breast cancer detection in women with dense breasts. Findings from the Digital Mammographic Imaging Screening Study, showed better breast cancer detection with digital mammography. But digital mammography is not available in many areas.  Moreover, Miller explains: “We do not know if this will benefit women at all.  It is very probable that removal of the additional small lesions will simply increase anxiety and health costs, including the overdiagnosis of breast cancer, and have no impact upon mortality from breast cancer.”

Additional imaging studies sound attractive to people convinced that there is something clinically significant to find. But as I pointed out in my last post, many radiologists and breast physicians contend that there is no evidence that magnetic resonance imaging or any other imaging study aids breast cancer screening in women with dense breasts. Brawley notes: “These laws will certainly lead to more referral for MRI and ultrasound without clear evidence that women will benefit (lives will be saved.) It’s clear that radiologists will make more money offering more tests.” Miller adds: “A number of doctors are trying to capitalize on this and some of them should know a lot better.”

Many Advocates Question More Tests, Statutes

Even though the “Are You Dense?” campaign has been instrumental in getting legislation on the books across the county, other advocacy groups and patient advocates want research, enhanced patient literacy about risks and benefits of procedures. Many recall mistakes made that led women down the path of aggressive procedures. In that group is the radical Halsted mastectomy, used widely before systematic study, but once studied,  found no better than breast-conserving surgery for many cancers, and bone marrow transplants, also found to be ineffective, wearing, and costly.

Jody Schoger, a breast cancer social media activist at @jodyms who engages women weekly on twitter at #bcsm, had this to say on my blog about the onslaught of additional screening tests:

“What is needed is not another expensive modality… but concentrated focus for a biomarker to indicate the women who WILL benefit from additional screening. Because what’s happening now is an avalanche of screening, and its subsequent emotional and financial costs, that is often far out of proportion to both the relative and absolute risk for invasive cancer. I simply don’t think more “external” technology is the answer but one that evolves from the biology of cancer.”

Eve Harris @harriseve, a proponent of patient navigation and patient literacy, challenged Peter Ubel, MD, professor of business administration and medicine, at Duke University, on his view of the value of patient empowerment on the breast density issue. In a post on Forbes, replicated in Psychology Today, Ubel argued that in cases where the pros and cons of a patient’s alternatives are well known, for example, considering mastectomy or lumpectomy, patient empowerment play an important role. “But we are mistaken to turn to patient empowerment to solve dilemmas about how best to screen for cancer in women with dense breasts,” he writes.

Harris disagrees, making a compelling case for patient engagement:

“I think that we can agree that legislative interference with medical practice is not warranted when it cannot provide true consumer protection. But the context is the biggest culprit in this situation. American women’s fear of breast cancer is out of proportion with its incidence and its mortality rate. Truly empowering people—patients would mean improving health literacy and understanding of risk…”

But evidence and literacy take time, don’t make for snappy reading or headlines, and don’t shore up political points. Can we stop the train towards right-to-inform laws and make real headway in women’s health? Can we reallocate healthcare dollars towards effective treatments that serve patients and engage them in their care? You have to wonder.

[Today's post is from Patient POV, the blog of Laura Newman, a science writer who has worked in health care for most of her adult life, first as a health policy analyst, and as a medical journalist for the last two decades. She was a proud member of the women’s health movement. She has a longstanding interest in what matters to patients and thinks that patients should play a major role in planning and operational discussions about healthcare. Laura’s news stories have appeared in Scientific American blogs, WebMD Medical News, Medscape, Drug Topics, Applied Neurology, Neurology Today, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, The Lancet, and BMJ, and numerous other outlets. You can find her on Twitter @lauranewmanny.]

The opinions in this article do not necessarily conflict with or reflect those of the DXS editorial team.