Julia Bradbury believes new AI screening could have detected her breast cancer earlier

Julia Bradbury believes new AI breast cancer screening could have detected disease earlierGood Morning Britain

Transcript

00:00Very interesting, because your breast cancer was missed twice.

00:03Yes, it was. So, I've got something called dense breasts,

00:05which I have to explain, because 40% of women have dense breasts.

00:08It's nothing to do with the shape or size.

00:10It's to do with your tissue, the density of the tissue.

00:13And it makes it very difficult to detect cancer on mammograms,

00:16on that type of imaging,

00:18because Brent's tests show up white on a mammogram

00:21and cancerous tumours show up white.

00:23So, the description by many medics is,

00:26it's like looking for a snowball in a snowstorm. Wow.

00:29So, I had a lump, I had self-checked,

00:31which I encourage people to do, check yourself, check yourself.

00:34I discovered a lump, but, as you said, two mammograms later,

00:38they went, no, benign microcyst, probably nothing to worry about.

00:41And it was on a third visit to my consultant,

00:44where it was an accidental, let me just give you an ultrasound

00:48before you leave and go off, for another year.

00:50And I did that, and he spotted it on an ultrasound,

00:53because ultrasound is better with dense breasts.

00:56Contentious issue, because you don't get ultrasound on the NHS,

00:59and actually, you're not even told you have dense breasts on the NHS.

01:02So, that's something that definitely needs to change

01:04in this new plan going forward with cancer care.

01:06If it had been missed that third time, what would have happened?

01:09Well, if it had been missed that third time, I might not be here,

01:12I might be going through a much more severe treatment now, perhaps.

01:17You know, your mind races as to what would have happened.

01:22Certainly, if it had been caught sooner,

01:24I probably would have had to have had a lumpectomy, not a mastectomy,

01:29because by the time they found my tumour, it was six centimetres.

01:32Wow. And the position of it meant that I had to lose my left breast,

01:37rather than going in for a smaller area of tissue that could be removed.