Women's Imaging
Mammography in the setting of breast implants:
- Standard techniques for compression and imaging are ineffective for patients with implants.
- Therefore special techniques are used to push the implant back in order to move it out of the way. Extra views will also be taken.
- In spite of this, mammograms performed on women with implants can still miss more tumors than is typical of most mammograms for women who do not have implants.
- In addition, women with implants should expect that mammography will require more views and therefore, take longer. This may result in a higher cost more and exposing them to a higher levels of radiation.
- Patient’s experiencing capsular contracture, can also make mammography more painful, less accurate, or even impossible to perform.
- Manipulation of the implant during the mammogram, rarely results in rupture or leakage of the implant.
- Biomaterials testing of breast implants indicates that implants should only break under the most traumatic circumstances, and yet implants break for no apparent reason, as well as under pressure from mammograms. It is difficult to know how much risk a mammogram increases the risk of rupture since so little is understood about why implants break and under what circumstance.
Contact Information:
Women's Imaging
Department 396
Mammography, bone-density testing, and ultrasound
Hours: Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m
408-851-5020
