Experts say findings mean breast screenings for cancer could also flag cardiovascular problems in women

Doctors have discovered a way to use routine mammograms that screen for breast cancer to spot heart disease, the world’s leading – and frequently underdiagnosed – cause of death in women.

Researchers analysed the scans using artificial intelligence and were able to successfully identify women with coronary heart disease, high blood pressure or who had suffered a stroke.

Experts said it meant breast screening for cancer could become dual-purpose, helping to flag women with heart disease, and other cardiovascular issues, as well as spotting breast cancer early.

Millions of women are living with undetected heart disease. For decades, it has often been misdiagnosed or not picked up until the late stages of the disease.

Details of the breakthrough were presented in Munich at the European Society of Cardiology’s annual congress, the world’s largest heart conference. The implications are significant because hundreds of millions of women undergo mammograms every year.

Doctors in Israel examined 97,364 scans from 29,921 women who had an average age of 54. By cross-referencing medical records, they found 16% of the women had high blood pressure, 2.5% had coronary heart disease, and 2.5% had experienced a stroke.

A machine-learning model was trained to identify women with these conditions and was able to reliably identify women who had suffered a stroke, based upon their mammogram alone, 86% of the time.

For high blood pressure and coronary heart disease, it was 79% and 78% reliable at distinguishing between the women with the condition and those without.

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