New breast exam more accurate than mammogram
For years I’ve bemoaned the barbarity and ineffectiveness of mammography as a breast cancer screening. But new studies show that a new and more accurate screening method could be right around the corner.
The new technique is called molecular breast imaging (MBI), and it’s been found to catch three times the number of breast cancer cases as mammography. It’s said to be especially effective for women with denser breast tissue who are usually at a higher risk for developing the disease.
MBI works by first injecting the patient with a radiotracer which helps to track the behavioral difference between cancerous tissue and normal tissue. One study using MBI found 10 of 13 cancer cases in a sample group of 375 patients. In the same group, mammography found just three of those 13 cancers.
According to the study author Carrie B. Hruska, a radiology researcher at the Mayo Clinic, “MBI detected more cancers than screening mammography, but didn’t produce more false positive results.”
Obviously, this is encouraging news. MBI was also found to have a higher percentage of biopsies that resulted in the discovery of an actual cancer (28 percent with MBI compared with 18 percent with mammography). What’s more, MBI is also relatively inexpensive.
All of this is terrific, right? Unfortunately, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies. Because if you ask me, there is one glaring problem with MBI: researchers are proposing that it be used only as an adjunct to mammography, not as a replacement.
I was very excited at the outset of this research, because I was hoping that MBI could mean the beginning of the end of mammography. In spite of years of being the most “popular” and well-known form of breast cancer screening, the fact remains that mammography just doesn’t work that well.
The problem is that mammograms are thought to be an “early warning system” for breast cancer, when nothing could be further from the truth. Mammograms seem only to be able to detect the larger tumors of breast cancer’s more advanced stages. So often when a woman has a mammogram come up positive, her disease has a deadly head start.
Also, and even more disturbing, is the fact that excessive compression of the breast (like during a routine mammogram) can actually break apart cancerous cell masses and CAUSE THE DISEASE TO SPREAD to other organs.
Mammography also results in a high number of “false positive” results – the kind that lead to women being butchered with needless biopsy procedures. Remember how MBI found 10 percent more cases of REAL cancer (28 percent compared to mammography’s 18 percent)? That doesn’t seem like a lot – unless you’re one of the women who had a needlessly biopsy because of a false positive from a mammogram!
Unfortunately, MBI is still not widely available. And since mammography is so entrenched in the healthcare community, it’s not going anywhere soon – even if the MBI technique becomes more widespread. So once again thanks to slow-footed medicine, this promising method is years from saving the lives that it seems to have to potential to save.
Ready for a joke? A guy is in a motel room with his mistress being naughty. Suddenly, the guy’s wife bursts into the room, catching him in the act. “Ah ha!” she says.
The guy sits up in bed and shouts, “It’s not my fault honey! I’ve got low vasopressin!”
OK, so maybe that’s not such a funny joke. But it could very well be the kind of excuse that philandering guys offer up in the near future once word gets out about this new study. According to Swedish researchers, the gene that controls the output of the hormone vasopressin and is believed to be linked to monogamy in prairie voles might have the same effect in humans.
The study found that men who had two copies of the gene known as allele 334 (which affects vasopressin) were twice as likely to be involved in a troubled marriage; 30 percent of the men with this extra gene were unmarried. These men also scored poorly on bonding tests.
So is the key to a happy marriage really in the genes? Probably not. Paul Lichtenstein, the leader of the study said that a man’s vasopressin genes don’t explain how they succeed in a relationship. “It gives you a predisposition, but it doesn’t determine how successful you will be in marriage,” Lichtenstein said.
