Home Resources Patient Friendly Tools What's Your Breast Cancer Risk: Tools that includes Breast Density as part of Risk Calculation

What's Your Breast Cancer Risk: Tools that includes Breast Density as part of Risk Calculation

Risk Assessment tools that include a patient's dense tissue - an critical risk factor for breast cancer.

Having dense tissue is an independent risk factor for breast cancer. Calculating this risk, along with other risk factors, is designed to better predict a women's risk of breast cancer. A three-tiered scale is used to determine lifetime risk - High (greater than 20%), Intermediate (between 15 - 20%) and Average (less than 15%)

Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) Risk Calculator

The Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC) Risk Calculator was developed and validated in 1.1 million women undergoing mammography across the United States, among whom 15,000 were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. The BCSC Risk Calculator is an interactive tool designed by scientists that participate in the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium to estimate a woman's five-year risk of developing invasive breast cancer. The tool includes as assessment of a patient's breast tissue composition.

Risk Assessment Tool here

Tyrer-Cuzick Risk Assessment (v.8)

The new version of the Tyrer-Cuzick Risk Assessment includes a patient's breast tissue composition as part of the assessment. There are three inputs of breast density included in the risk assessment - the ACR 4^th edition BI-RADS, the visual analogue scale (VAS) and Volpara Density, an objective computer-based measure of breast density.

Link to the tool here.

Back to Resources

Learn More

Donate

Contact

AYD In The News

What is Dense Breast Tissue?

How Do I Know if I Have Dense Breast Tissue?

What Do I Do if I Have Dense Breast Tissue?

Are You Dense? Fact #1:
Breast density is one of the strongest predictors of the failure of mammography screening to detect cancer.
Are You Dense? Fact #2:
Two-thirds of pre-menopausal women and 40% of post-menopausal women have dense breast tissue.
Are You Dense? Fact #3:
Adding more sensitive tests to mammography significantly increase detection of invasive cancers that are small and node negative.
Are You Dense? Fact #4:
American College of Radiology describes women with "Dense Breast Tissue" as having a higher than average risk of Breast Cancer.
Are You Dense? Fact #5:
While a mammogram detects 98% of cancers in women with fatty breasts, it finds only 48% in women with dense breasts.
Are You Dense? Fact #6:
A woman at average risk and a woman at high risk have an EQUAL chance of having their cancer masked by mammogram.
Are You Dense? Fact #7:
Women with dense breasts who had breast cancer have a four times higher risk of recurrence than women with less-dense breasts.
Are You Dense? Fact #8:
A substantial proportion of Breast Cancer can be attributed to high breast density alone.
Are You Dense? Fact #9:
Cancer turns up five times more often in women with extremely dense breasts than those with the most fatty tissue.
Are You Dense? Fact #10
There are too many women who are unaware of their breast density, believe their “Happy Gram” when it reports no significant findings and are at risk of receiving a later stage cancer diagnosis.