Ryan Polselli

                Know the Facts  Dr. Ryan Polselli

I spent part of the afternoon supporting breast cancer awareness with Tampa Bay Mobile Mammography at Hillsborough County's Think Pink Breast Cancer Awareness Proclamation Ceremony in downtown Tampa. It was a beautiful gathering of breast cancer survivors, city commissioners, members of the media, American Cancer Society representatives, members of police and fire department, and numerous other supporters.

Part two of "5 Things Women Should Know About a Mammogram" In this video I discuss a frequently misunderstood part of screening mammography...the callback. I hope you like and share. For more information on Dr. Ryan Polselli please visit Dr. Ryan Polselli

The terms BRCA1 and BRCA2 (sometimes pronounced "bracka" 1 and 2) generally refer to important portions of the human genome that make proteins in cells that suppress tumors (typically breast or ovarian cancer) by repairing DNA that may be damaged during the course of one's life. Any damage to the BRCA 1 or 2 gene segments therefore predisposes an individual to breast and ovarian cancer. Although there are many similarities between the two genes, there are many important differences that are important to understand. In general, both BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations have been found to increase the lifetime risk of breast cancer very roughly between 50 and 85%. BRCA1 mutations however result in a higher risk of lifetime ovarian cancer (up to 60% in some studies) than BRCA2 (up to 20% in some studies). There is also a predilection for the two mutations to present with different types of cancer with some differences between the sexes. For example, BRCA2 is more likely to...

Hope this helps get the word out that screening mammograms are still one of the greatest tools we have to save the important women in our lives. Dr. Ryan Polselli FaceBook Video     Dr. Ryan Polselli, Breast Imaging Radiologist, dedicated to improving mammography, and founder and CEO of MammoLink®

"I was told I have a fibroadenoma, does this put me at a higher risk for developing breast cancer?" --Anonymous Patient Fibroadenomas are the most common mass found in the breast. They are benign. They do not impart any more risk of breast cancer than normal breast tissue. Although fibroadenomas have a fairly characteristic appearance on mammogram or ultrasound, cancer can sometimes look the same. For this reason it's a good to keep an eye on any mass that is assumed to be a fibroadenoma and make sure there is no change in appearance or rapid growth. If the mass which is assumed to be a fibroadenoma is large, there is rapid growth, or the uncertainty of diagnosis makes the patient uncomfortable, they should be biopsied with a needle. If the results from the needle biopsy reliably confirm the mass is a fibroadenoma, they can be left alone. If for some reason the needle biopsy is not conclusive or the diagnosis doesn't fit with the appearance or behavior...

Chapter 1 The older I get, the more certain memories from my childhood replay in my mind while others continue to fade away. The interesting thing to me is that most of the memories that now repeatedly play out in my mind are those that I didn't think twice about at the time as a child.  In the last ten years I find myself repeatedly trying to recall and tease out the details of the memory from the time I was tested for a learning disability.  The bus The large pencil Flash Cards Mrs. Frazierwood PE and the Bean Bag The chickens The blind taste test The day my head was stepped on Nap time The test The tutor Teddy

This "blog" is not a blog in the traditional sense. It is the intermittent rambling and accumulation of notes and ideas as I work towards the creation of my book. There will be run-on and incomplete sentences. The ideas may not always be coherent. My seventh grade English teacher used to say that you can't write anything unless you start to get the ideas on paper. He called it "pushing the pen." That is what I will be doing here. If someone takes an interest in the ugly process, so be it. But ultimately my goal here is to write a book, not entertain while I do it. With time, lots of learning, and hard work I hope the ugliness will take shape into a beautiful final product. It's probably not normal to start writing a book with a foreword, who knows, maybe it is, but the other morning while lying in bed I was thinking about how hard this task would be for me because I am not a writer. Then it dawned on me that this is a great place to start my book. So I sta...