Breast Calcifications New Meaning

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Breast Calcifications New Meaning

Written by Allen Lawrence, M.D.

Sunday, 23 January 2011 10:58

Mammograms: Detecting More Than Breast Cancer, May Help Assess Heart Risk in Kidney Disease Patients

Mammography can help early diagnosis of kidney and heart disease. In a soon to be released study to be published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN) researchers are suggesting that routine mammograms performed for breast cancer screening could also be valuable for detecting calcifications in the blood vessels of women with advanced kidney disease.

Often during mammograms micro calcification are found which are not related to cancer. Researchers have now recognized that at least two-thirds of women with end-stage renal disease will also have these micro calcifications. These calcium deposits in the breast arteries may now be useful marker of medial vascular calcification associated with chronic kidney disease. It now appears that their prevalence may be significantly increased in women with end-stage renal disease as well as advanced chronic kidney disease.

Arterial calcium deposits also contribute to the increased number of death from heart disease in patients with kidney disease. This might also mean that micro calcifications found in the breasts could be an indicator for potential heart disease.

This information was obtained when the researchers reviewed routine mammograms performed in 71 women with end-stage renal disease and found breast arterial calcifications in 63 percent of these women. In a matched group of women without kidney disease, mammograms showed breast arterial calcifications in just 17 percent of the mammograms.

When researchers reviewed mammograms from the women with end-stage renal disease, they then discovered that thirty-six percent of these women had already had breast arterial calcifications on mammograms performed several years earlier, several years before their kidney disease advanced to be considered end-stage disease. Also noted was that more than 90 percent of women with calcifications of their breast artery also had evidence of calcification in other blood vessels.

This means that calcium deposits seen on mammograms could be "a marker of generalized vascular calcifications" not only in women with kidney disease, but possibly also in women who do not either yet have kidney disease or are in the process of developing other forms of atherosclerotic disease involving the heart, brain or other organs.

In this study most women reviewed were at an age where yearly mammograms are already recommended. Researchers wondered it mammograms could also be a useful tool for studying the development and progression of atherosclerotic disease. Mammograms might be a way to make early identification and hence treatment to lower the risk atherosclerotic of cardiovascular disease. Obviously, more study is needed.