Wisconsin Op-ed, UK Education, Study on False-Negative Mammograms

November 1, 2025 by JoAnn Pushkin

U.S. State Insurance Bills

DBI’s work on individual state insurance bills for expanded breast imaging coverage continues. Executive Director JoAnn Pushkin’s op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel details why the proposed Gails’ Law, inspired by Wisconsin patient advocate Gail Zeamer, should advance and why it matters. For details on existing individual state insurance laws for expanded breast imaging, see the DBI MAP.

Europe / UK Education

DBI’s European Education Coordinator Cheryl Cruwys was invited by the University of Suffolk to lecture diagnostic radiography students on dense breasts, including an overview of DBI website healthcare professional resources.

New Study

From over 32 million screening and over 6 million diagnostic mammography records from 2010-2022 in the National Mammography Database, Oleyumi et al. evaluated false negative rates (FNR) at one year and associations with facility and patient factors.  FNR was 1.9/1000 and 4.0/1000 for screening and diagnostic mammograms, respectively. Though interval cancers found by supplemental screening were included among false negatives and could not be distinguished from those found due to symptoms and linkage to tumor registries was mostly lacking, there were several interesting observations:

• The likelihood of a false-negative mammogram was highest for women with a personal history of breast cancer.¹
• Women with scattered fibroglandular density, heterogeneously dense, or extremely dense breasts were each more likely to have a false negative mammogram than women with fatty breasts.²
• The likelihood of a false negative mammogram was higher among White women compared to women of other races.³
• False-negative mammograms were more likely among academic facilities compared to community hospital-based facilities.

¹ For women with a personal history of breast cancer compared to those without, the odds ratios (OR) were 3.69 (95% CI 3.61-3.76) and 7.82 (95% CI 7.58-8.06) for screening and diagnostic mammography, respectively.

² For screening mammography, ORs were 1.60 (95% CI 1.53-1.67), 2.00 (95% CI 1.92-2.09), and 1.82 (95% CI 1.71-1.93) for scattered fibroglandular density, heterogeneously dense, and extremely dense breasts compared to fatty, respectively.

³ For screening mammography, ORs were 0.48 (95% CI 0.42-0.56), 0.89 (95% CI 0.95-0.94), 0.85 (0.82-0.88) and 0.30 (95% CI 0.26-0.34) for American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian, Black, and Hawaiian vs. White women, respectively.