Breast Augmentation And Cancer Detection

If you are considering breast augmentation, know that there are some risks involved that you may have never heard of. For example, certain types of procedures can make cancer screenings complicated, which is why you need to tell your doctor that you have had surgery on this part of the body. Consider a few ways that implants or fat injections meant to augment chest size can make it difficult to tell at first glance whether you have cancer.

It has been found that implants make it hard to see cancerous cells during a mammogram. This screening takes a photo of the tissue to look for lumps and tumors. The breasts have to be flattened between the plates of the machine, but implants are not as easily flattened as natural tissue, so they may not be flat enough to easily see lumps. This means that the doctor must take more pictures than usual to detect abnormal cells. The doctor just needs to push the implant out of the way to be able to flatten the natural tissue during the mammogram. Thus, while screenings are definitely possible after breast augmentation, they do take more time and care, so you are advised to tell your doctor about your implants when scheduling the appointment. Note, though, that the larger the implant, the harder it is to get a clear picture of the tissue.

If you are considering the natural route of breast augmentation, in which flab is taken from your abdomen and injected into your chest, you should know that there are still some problems with detecting cancer. Of course, you are avoiding having a foreign item put into your body this way, which means that you should have no problem with flattening the breasts during a mammogram. However, many women have had a scare due to their doctor noticing suspicious lumps in the photos after the mammogram. These lumps usually turn out to be fat cells that were injected during the breast augmentation, but they are indistinguishable from cancer at first glance, at least once they start to undergo necrosis as some fat cells do. This means that if you have this type of procedure, you will likely have to go in after the initial screening to ensure that the lumps found are just fat rather than cancer. In some cases, you may need a biopsy if your physician still cannot tell what the lump is. This means that part of the tissue may need to be cut off for testing until it can be determined that you do not have cancerous cells.

These are not reasons to avoid breast augmentation, but they are good reasons to tell your physician ahead of time that you have had this surgery. This way, they will be able to schedule a longer appointment for the testing process. They will also be able to avoid jumping to conclusions after finding lumps in your breasts, as there is a high chance that the lumps are made of fat that is supposed to be there.