The Association Between Obesity and Screening Mammography Accuracy

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Abstract
Obese, postmenopausal women have an increased risk of breast cancer compared with postmenopausal women of normal weight.1 Obese women are also diagnosed as having a later stage of breast cancer compared with nonobese women.2 It has been hypothesized that women with larger breasts may be less able to feel small breast lumps, thereby increasing the likelihood of progression in disease stage.2 This possibility is supported by at least 1 study,3 which found that women with larger breasts were likely to have larger tumors at diagnosis. It is unclear from these studies what role mammography plays in cancer detection, but the findings at least raise the question of whether mammography performs differently among obese women compared with normal weight women.