Narrator: This is Science Today. Mammograms performed in women with breast implants are not as good at detecting breast cancer. But Karla Kerlikowske, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, helped conduct a study that found that this did not result in cancers of worse prognosis.

Kerlikowske: So that was a bit of a surprise – because why would that be so? You’d think that if you were going to miss the cancer, it would be more advanced, but it wasn’t as far as size of tumor, stage of tumor, estrogen receptor status, the tumors were identical in the two groups.

Narrator: Kerlikowske says this may be because if there is any kind of breast symptom, women with breast implants seek medical care more quickly than women without implants.

Kerlikowske: So good news is that the tumors aren’t worse, but it does miss tumors, so we recommend that women go to a place where they do something called displacement views, so you optimize your chance of finding a cancer if it’s present. Displacement views basically take the breast implant and move it up into the chest wall, so when you do the mammogram, you’re only compressing breast tissue and not the implant.

Narrator: For Science Today, I’m Larissa Branin.