Advantages and disadvantages of mammography

Mammography with molybdenum target is simple, convenient, low-cost and non-invasive. It is one of the traditional breast cancer screening methods and has become the first choice for breast cancer screening. An important function of mammography is to find asymptomatic patients or tumors with negative clinical palpation, especially for the latter, mammography can show the lesions two years before they develop into palpation positive masses. The display of breast calcification is more sensitive than other examination methods. The data shows that among asymptomatic patients, breast cancer found by mammography is twice as common as that found by physical examination. For cases with clinically palpable masses, mammography can help to judge the nature of the lesions by displaying the size, quantity, location, density, edge, shape, presence or absence of calcification, the shape, size, quantity and distribution of calcification, and the changes of peripheral halo and skin. Its limitations are as follows: (1) The patient's breast overlaps with the lesion when it is abundant, so it can't show the whole picture of the lesion, or even appear false negative; (2) Small cancerous lesions close to the chest wall and dense breast are easy to be missed; (3) Sometimes it can't provide a definite qualitative diagnosis.