A Closer Look at the Mammo Enhance Heart Program: An Interview with Arthy Saravanan, MD

Current estimates suggest that one woman dies from cardiovascular disease every 80 seconds and that over 450,000 women die from heart disease annually in the United States. In light of these sobering figures, breast radiologist Arthy Saravanan, M.D., said the advent of the Mammo Enhance Heart program, with its combined emphasis on breast cancer screening as well as cardiovascular risk assessment, could have a significant preventive impact for women’s health.

“The Mammo Enhance Heart program is specifically designed to take the screening mammogram that a patient gets and provide the additional layer of information that wasn't provided before, which is the identification of cardiovascular disease risk,” explained Dr. Saravanan in a recent interview with Diagnostic Imaging. “So it's really a two for one program, because the patient is not having any extra radiation, doesn't have any extra pain or discomfort or extra time spent to have this portion of their health evaluated. It is really an opportunistic screening measure.”

Dr. Saravanan emphasized that breast arterial calcification (BAC), detected on mammograms, is an established biomarker for cardiovascular disease risk and adverse events. She added that the FDA-cleared artificial intelligence (AI) tool used for the Mammo Enhance Heart program (developed by Radiology Partners) offers enhanced sensitivity for BAC detection with potential monitoring benefits in comparing successive mammography screening.

“The tool can also be used, I think, in terms of follow up in future imaging. Year after year, if a patient is coming back to us and getting a screening mammogram and chooses to have the Mammo Enhance Heart program, the tool can help to identify if these calcifications have increased, stayed the same, (or) whether those effects are getting worse over time,” posited Dr. Saravanan, an assistant professor in the Department of Diagnostic Medicine at the University of Texas, Austin.

Dr. Saravanan added that the Mammo Enhance Heart program, which also facilitates follow-up with cardiologists if necessary, enables radiologists to have an even broader impact in preventive care for women.

“I really think this is kind of a first step in how we as breast imagers and radiologists in general can add to fields and functions outside of our kind of capacity to help in the overall care of the patient. … It's not just breast cancer risk that we're assessing now. We're also looking a step ahead and a step further into heart disease risk and really kind of the overall holistic picture of how this might affect a woman's health,” pointed out Dr. Saravanan, the associate chief medical officer of recruitment for Radiology Partners.

(Editor’s note: For related content, see “New Mammo Enhance Heart Program to Enhance Dual Screening for Breast Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease,” “FDA Expands Clearance for AI Mammography Software for Breast Arterial Calcification Detection” and “New Mammography Studies Assess Image-Based AI Risk Models and Breast Arterial Calcification Detection.”)

For more insights from Dr. Saravanan, watch the video below.