Denser breasts with HRT -- and mammograms/imaging
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Like me, I know many of you here have dense breasts. My question about having dense breasts AND THEN having started HRT. We know that HRT usually makes dense breasts even denser. So, to me this implies that mammograms and ultrasounds will be even less successful at finding small tumors. OR, that there WILL be find suspicious findings leading to biopsies, but that there will be an even higher rate of false positives (while women go through the anxiety and physical discomfort of having breast biopsies). I guess this has me anxious. I'm worried that now my dense(r) breasts are not only going to make imaging even more iffy, but that that will lead to an increase of false positives after biopsy (not saying anyone should not do either, just concerned about the additional factor of HRT and the creation of denser breasts factored in now). White matter on a mammogram is dense tissue. It is also potentially cancerous. Ultrasound can to an extent decipher that. And then, not as well as breast MRI. Sigh. I'm not hugely well versed in any of this, just looking for input or experiences from women more knowledgeable than me. HRT definitely caused me very painful and heavy breasts... so I went down a dose and that has improved greatly - but not 100 percent. I also read that once a woman gets denser breasts due to HRT, stopping the HRT often won't decrease the density seen on mammogram, or not enough to bring the mammogram imaging back to one's pre-HRT days. I'm in a high anxiety state for other reasons and this is my latest mind fukc. Thanks for listening.
Details
- Subreddit
- r/Menopause
- Author
- u/OrMaybeTomorrow
- Posted
- Feb 12, 2026 at 10:58 PM UTC
AI Analysis
- Medication
- hormone replacement therapy (HRT)
- Condition
- menopause, dense breasts, breast cancer screening/anxiety
- Geography
- us likely