The surgery center offers traditional mammograms, but Watt said the center will try to accommodate any woman who prefers the digital procedure. Insurance coverage for mammography varies widely. About 10 percent of women who have a mammogram return for another X ray because the first X ray found something suspicious. Digital mammograms may cut this recall rate in half, experts say, because the computerized systems allow doctors to magnify breast pictures or change background lighting to correct for over or underexposure of an X ray. With the traditional mammograms, women may wait weeks for a second opinion.
Digital mammograms allow an immediate picture of the full breast, including tissue nearest the skin.
Conventional mammograms have to be held up to a light to see the skin line, a process that takes slightly more time, Watt said. Women someday may be able to get a CD of their mammogram records, if they change doctors or move. With film X rays, women often face delays or can lose access to their records if a doctor retires or goes out of business. That problem surfaced in metro Detroit in the past two years with the bankruptcy of a large Oakland County network of radiology centers. To date, there has been only one screening study comparing digital mammography to film mammography among 6,768 women.