Every year, roughly 8,000 women get breast cancer in Sweden, and in 2020, almost 1,400 women died of the disease.
Every second Swedish woman also has so-called dense breasts and thus runs an increased risk of breast cancer, while their tumors are more often missed on mammograms.
Ellinor Persson suffered from breast cancer, but it was she herself who discovered a tumor – which was missed, despite several mammograms over a six-year period.
– I think they are playing with people’s lives, says Ellinor Persson, who is strongly critical of the fact that women with dense breasts do not get any control other than mammography, where tumors are often missed.
In Sweden, women are not allowed to know if they have dense breasts, something that is legal in e.g. USA.
– In women with the densest breasts, which make up ten percent, approximately every other breast cancer is missed, says Per Hall, professor at the Karolinska Institutet and senior physician at Södersjukhuset.
In the clip above: Ellinor Persson’s breast cancer was missed: “I think it’s a scandal”