Mammography x-ray Machine
The machine standing up in the middle of the room is the x-ray machine itself. The top part of it is where the x-rays come out and they travel downwards in front of you to pass through your breast and on to the x-ray film (or sometimes now a special plate or detector tablet), which is held in the black plate that you can see underneath the x-ray tube. The whole arm on the machine can be turned around so that the x-rays, instead of going from the top to the bottom, can go from the right to the left, or the left to the right, to take pictures of your breasts from different angles.Mammography is usually done on women aged over 35, who have a breast lump or an area of abnormality within the breast. Sometimes it is done because there is fluid coming out of the nipple, or because of something else that you or a doctor is worried about. Mammography is quite a good way of finding breast cancer, if it is there.
Well women also have mammograms. Because breast cancers can sometimes be very small, even if you have not noticed a lump it is worthwhile having mammograms in the national breast screening programme from 50 years. After 70 years people are not sent appointments and are encouraged to contact their local unit to make an appointment for mammography. These mammograms are called 'screening' mammograms, because we are screening the population to see if they have breast cancer or not. Very often the breast cancers found by screening are so small that, not only can they not be felt but, as long as we find out about them early enough and can treat them, they will not affect your life.
Many people worry about x-ray dose, especially when a part of their body like the breast is being X rayed. It has been worked out that it is around 300 times more likely that you will find a breast cancer than cause one, even though breast cancer is comparatively rare. The dose is about the same as the dose of x-ray that you would get from flying to America on Concorde. It is the same cancer risk as smoking two cigarettes.