FYI: about 1 in 10 screening mammograms will be read as positive. Most of these are false positives.

Roughly 1 in 12 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point during life (more if you include died with breast cancer).

Mammograms find about 5 out of every 6 cancers. Thus, about 1 in 70 women will feel a cancer we don’t see. About half of these are cancers we will never see regardless of size and the rest are too small to see compared to background.

In short, breasts are dangerous and imaging can’t save everyone…self exam matters…things that grow and grow and grow require an answer when the get to be about the size of half you thumb even if we can’t see the problem by mammogram / ultrasound (usually by surgical excisional biopsy or sometimes via MRI).