Beyond Breast Cancer 🩻❤️: When a Mammogram Warns the Heart

🩻 Could a mammogram also offer a window into cardiovascular risk? ❤️

Breast arterial calcification (BAC), once largely dismissed as incidental, is increasingly recognized as a cardiovascular risk signal. Greater BAC burden has been associated with adverse outcomes, including stroke and heart failure. Maryland now requires BAC notification on routine mammograms.

💡 The practical message: see BAC → think cardiovascular risk assessment.

⚠️ But BAC ≠ coronary artery calcium, and we still lack randomized evidence that BAC-directed intervention improves outcomes.

Perhaps the mammogram is becoming a two-for-one screening opportunity.