Calcifications on mammo. Need biopsy

so sorry you’re going through all this right now. It can be both overwhelming and confusing. I’ll see if I can answer some of your questions:

how could imaging not see the mass but you can feel it? Mammos and u/s are not perfect and certain masses don’t show up on them especially with dense breast tissue. I would ask for the mri as it should give a better picture of what’s going on since mammo & u/s didn’t. MRI is better for dense breast viewing anyway. Someone I’m sure will pop in and say mri has so many false positives, but we also know mammo with or without ultrasound has so many false negatives too. Because of these reasons I’d request mri and use these reasons to push for it.

So yes, you should request mri.

Could the calcification be related to the mass? Yes and no. The biopsy of the calcification will give more information. It sounds like the radiologist does not like the look of the cluster of calcifications. Certain patterns in calcification clusters are more worrisome for pre-cancer or tumor shedding than others. And if the recommendation to remove that area of tissue where they are located is given, it would be wise to follow through. Sounds like your radiologist prefers to be safe than sorry and that’s good.

In the meantime, worrying will not change anything that may or may not be there. Schedule your next appointments and stay busy living your life as normal as possible. Results that will tell you if you need to worry or not will be here soon enough. I know it’s way easier said than done, but it does help. I hope this helps and keep us updated!

Melissa, after re-reading your post and Lula's response I wanted to add something. I too had a very dense breast, the left one. When they discovered the cancerous mass in my right breast my surgeon requested an MRI to "make sure we weren't missing anything". Because of the MRI they found a cancerous mass bigger than the one in the right side and a group of pre-cancerous nodules in my left breast that weren't detected by mammogram. I'm not telling you this to scare you. That's not my intention at all! What I am trying to say is sometimes the MRI picks up things that a mammogram misses. I thank God, in my case, that my surgeon pushed for it.

I wish you luck with your biopsy. Keep us updated with how you are doing. Hugs to you!

funny Oceanum should bring that up! I don't want to scare you either but in my case mammo picked up the calcifications. It was the mri that picked up the cancer in the other breast.

I just saw this and am so, so sorry Melissa. I'm glad too that you got checked. I have the same diagnosis as you. I was in shock for awhile and sometimes still am.

I saw your post Taxiof2 and wanted to respond but I hope someone else chimes in because I don't really have an answer for you as I don't know much about ADH. What I would advise is to get another opinion if you're not comfortable and don't feel like they know what they're doing. Even if you get the same answer, hopefully you can find somewhere that you feel like they know what they're doing. I had a baseline mammogram when I was 35 and it was clear. Right before I turned 40 I started having pain in my right breast and they didn't think too much of it, but told me to go ahead and schedule my next mammogram, which I did and calcifications showed up. My surgeon said that if I hadn't had the baseline mammogram, they may still be watching the calcifications because they are not uncommon (and they still don't think the pain was related to the cancer) but because they had the baseline mammogram, they knew the calcifications were new. My situation may be nothing like yours and I truly hope it's not but you have to find out what you need to so that you can feel comfortable. Good luck!! And hopefully you'll hear from someone who knows more about ADH.

Taxiof2, I was just diagnosed with ADH in December after a stereo biopsy. I had an excisional biopsy, just to make sure nothing else showed. The stereo biopsy got all of the ADH. It doesn't just go away, but a biopsy can remove it all.