The recent announcement of Joan Lunden, a Greenwich resident about her developing breast cancer shows that additional screenings for breast cancer are getting common now. It was discovered by ultrasound.

She is the former "Good Morning, America" host and had dense breasts which means that the tissue is made up of less fat and more fibrous connective tissue. A mammogram which was done recently missed the cancer but it was picked up later in an ultrasound.

According to Dr. Anees Chagpar who is the director of breast cancer at Tale-New Haven Hospital's Smilow Cancer Hospital, mammograms appear problematic in those women who have dense breast tissue because a black and white image of the breast is obtained. Dense tissue is "white" in the image which is possibly cancerous mass, she said. "It's a white-on-white image", Chagpar said.

Connecticut was the first state to enact dense breast legislation in 2009 which required women to be informed of their breast density on receiving their mammography report and also mandated that insurance companies should provide coverage for additional screening.

Although ultrasounds improve detection of breast cancer, there is no evidence to that they decrease patient's risk of death due to breast cancer. This is a reason why some people in the medical community objected to breast density legislation, said Dr. Barbara A. Ward, medical director of Greenwich Hospital's breast centre.

Another drawback is the fact that although insurance covers the cost of breast ultrasounds, not all of them cover the entire cost.

Also, as with most methods of breast cancer screening, there are concerns about false reports. Sometimes ultrasounds, mammograms and other screening methods pick up abnormalities that do not turn out to be cancer. This may cause fear and anxiety in patients and may also lead to unnecessary breast biopsies.

Unlike mammograms, the ultrasounds make use of sound waves to make images of breasts and give a better differentiation of the breast tissue and possible abnormalities. Research has shown that in women, who have dense breasts; ultrasounds combined with mammograms pick up more cancers than only mammograms.