Routine mammograms are a critical tool for breast cancer screening. However, they may also hold crucial, potentially untapped information about a person's risk for cardiovascular disease, the number one cause of death among adults. The X-ray images can detect calcium in the breast's arteries, a sign that the blood vessels are getting stiffer.
New research - presented on Dec. 3 at the Radiological Society of North America meeting by Matthew Nudy, assistant professor of medicine and public health sciences at Penn State College of Medicine - found that the severity of calcium accumulation in breast arteries and the progression of this calcification seen on mammograms predicted future cardiovascular disease. In this study, researchers found that women with more severe calcification and with calcification that progressed over time had an increased risk for major events, like heart attack, stroke, heart failure and death.
These findings suggest that breast arterial calcification could be a marker for cardiovascular disease and may help identify women who are at greatest risk for cardiovascular disease.
"We know that women are more likely to be diagnosed at later stages of cardiovascular disease and have worse outcomes following a heart attack compared to men. That may be in part because the current cardiovascular risk assessment tools underestimate risk in women. We need better tools," Nudy said. "In the future, assessment of breast arterial calcification may help improve our ability to predict risk and prevent cardiovascular disease."
