New primary site in contralateral breast

Posted by jlgc @jlgc, Jan 27 7:58am

During 1 year f/u for right side DCISinvasive, found possible 12mm calcifications in contralateral breast. Bx Monday. Right side is clear after surgery and XRT last spring. Supposed to be leaving for 5 week trip to Europe in 3 weeks, really disappointed but trying to stay positive.
Anyone have contralateral DCIS?

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My surgeon told me it’s extremely rare for breast cancer develop in the opposite side. So stay positive. God wants us well and we will recover under his grace and promise.

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Results 1 1/2 days later: No Malignancy!!

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@resort

My surgeon told me it’s extremely rare for breast cancer develop in the opposite side. So stay positive. God wants us well and we will recover under his grace and promise.

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From The New England Journal:
A woman with unilateral breast cancer has an increased risk of having cancer in the contralateral breast.1-6 In the 1990s, the role of mammography in improving the detection of contralateral cancers at the time of the initial diagnosis of breast cancer was firmly established; as compared with clinical breast examination alone, mammography resulted in a 1 to 3% increase in the number of cancers detected.7-9 Despite normal findings on clinical and mammographic examination of the contralateral breast at the time of the initial breast-cancer diagnosis, however, contralateral cancer was subsequently detected in up to 10% of women.1,3,5,6 When contralateral cancer is diagnosed after the initial treatment, the woman must undergo a second round of cancer therapy rather than the single round that would have been administered if the contralateral cancer had been detected at the time of the initial diagnosis.
The importance of clinical breast examination and mammography in the diagnostic workup of a woman with recently diagnosed breast cancer is not disputed. However, mammography and clinical breast examination have limitations — both methods yield false negative results.10,11 A recent large study showed that screening magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can improve on mammography by detecting otherwise occult cancers in 1.2% of women at high risk.10 However, this study did not include women with a current diagnosis of breast cancer.

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@jlgc

Results 1 1/2 days later: No Malignancy!!

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So glad to hear! You can plan your trips now! Could you share what the “suspicious” tissue is about?

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Suspicious tissue I believe is when a radiologist sees something, in my case it was coarse heterogeneous calcifications. A radiologist then labels them on a Birad scale of zero to 6. 6 being definite malignancy 5 highly suspicious and so on down the line. What I understand is that anything below a 4 is not necessarily reported. 4 = suspicious. Within the 4 is 4a, 4b, 4c. So at least at my healthcare facility they biopsy for a Birad score of 4.
I believe there are several other characteristics that influence the “suspicious” label, e.g. morphology, placement, are they linear or clustered.
This is why they have radiologists highly trained and experienced looking at mammograms and breast MRIs.
Disclaimer: the above is my interpretation of journal articles I have read.

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@jlgc

Suspicious tissue I believe is when a radiologist sees something, in my case it was coarse heterogeneous calcifications. A radiologist then labels them on a Birad scale of zero to 6. 6 being definite malignancy 5 highly suspicious and so on down the line. What I understand is that anything below a 4 is not necessarily reported. 4 = suspicious. Within the 4 is 4a, 4b, 4c. So at least at my healthcare facility they biopsy for a Birad score of 4.
I believe there are several other characteristics that influence the “suspicious” label, e.g. morphology, placement, are they linear or clustered.
This is why they have radiologists highly trained and experienced looking at mammograms and breast MRIs.
Disclaimer: the above is my interpretation of journal articles I have read.

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Thank you so much! So happy for you to go on your life and travel soon!

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