The surprising way breast cancer screenings could reveal heart disease - WaPo

Routine mammograms that screen for breast cancer can also flag the risk of heart disease, the leading and often underrecognized cause of death in women, according to a new study in the European Heart Journal.


For decades, radiologists have observed that breast cancer screening scans also reveal calcium deposits in the arteries woven through breast tissue, which cause the blood vessels to stiffen.

The new study shows how artificial intelligence can be used, at scale, to opportunistically turn this “incidental finding” into a warning system for an entirely different category of disease. Researchers used AI to quantify the calcium deposits on arteries in more than 120,000 breast cancer screening scans and found that more severe breast artery calcification (BAC) was a marker of increased risk for heart failure, heart attacks, stroke and death.

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Trivedi and colleagues devised an AI algorithm to quantify the level of calcium deposits in their breast cancer scans and categorized them into four broad categories along a continuum, from zero evidence of calcified arteries to severe. Then, they saw how predictive those categories were of major cardiovascular events in the women, who had been followed for a median of seven years.

They found that the BAC score was a powerful way to flag risk. Between two women who looked similar across other attributes, such as age, race and known cardiovascular risk factors, those in the “severe” category had double the risk of having a cardiovascular event of someone with no calcification, the study found.

There is already AI software from the company CureMetrix that has been cleared by regulators to detect calcification in mammograms. Some clinics already offer this add-on service to women, sometimes for an additional out-of-pocket cost. Doctors were hesitant to give medical advice, but pointed out that the main value of the test right now would be to flag women who were ignoring their heart health and not seeing a primary care doctor for traditional cardiovascular screening, such as monitoring blood pressure and cholesterol.

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