Breast heath is nothing to fool with. How a woman takes care of her breasts is a very individual decision. Some women follow the doc's orders and give themselves monthly self-breast exams-good for you for being proactive. Some women will follow their doc's recommendations to get a baseline mammogram at age 35 and then have yearly screenings from age 40 on. Others choose other avenues such as Thermography screenings(4).(6)
Whatever you choose, thorougly research it using valid and appropriate material. Be very careful when researching on line-there is a lot of BS out there. Aside from checking out what the AMA has to say, you might also want to check out what's going on in the medical associations in Europe and other areas. Here's a statement from the AMA in Australia.(5)
Herein lies the rub... mammograms and thermographies are completely different kinds of screenings and in a perfect world doing a combination screening yearly would be a two-punch knockout. Unfortunately that's not best idea because of the longlasting effects of mammographies. With thermographies you have to make sure that the equipment is the latest available and the technician is trained well. Unfortunately there are no general standards or licensing so you have to be careful. My thermography office always has the newest equipment and an awesome tech. Further, the results are interpreted by a top radiologist. (4)
Thermographies have limitiations in that they are not covered by insurance, doctors dont back them, and they can't really get into dense breast tissue to see what's doin'. On the other hand, thermographies watch changes in your circulatory system and can spot a suspicious branching of the system about 10 years before a tumor even thinks about growing. Now THAT is preventative, wouldn't you say? Also, There is zero radiation, zero invasiveness, and zero breast squeezing. Breast squeezing is not only uncomfortable but also damaging to the delicate tissue-let me know when they start squeezing testicles between plates before they zap them with radiation for screening purposes.
Mammograms have their limitations as well. You are exposed to 0.7 mSv radiation FOR EACH SHOT "which is about the same as the average person receives from background radiation in three months" (1). When I went for my baseline mammogram, not only did they take a bunch of shots but I had to go back because they didn't like the shots they got (or thought they saw something-they are not usually straight with you) and all together I bet I had near 8 to 10... lets add that up for a second... that's 7 mSv not POINT 7 and that is THIRTY MONTHS of background radiation-30 months is 2 1/2 years worth and that's just for ONE mammogram session. False positives for women between the ages of 40 and 49 is approx 15% (1). Imagine all the fun those false positives lead to. There are also a good number of false negatives...
Now lets throw this little diddy in... for women ages 40 to 49, there is no significant decrease in breast cancer deaths from having yearly screenings and worse, you've now been exposed to 10 years of radiation. "This usually requires at least two mammograms from different angles of each breast." (2). I'm not sure how many different angles are used but lets just say they take 4 shots of each breast-that's 8 shots and 5.6 mSv which is 2 years worth of "background radiation" every year for approximately 20 years worth of additional background radiation including the initial baseline mammogram.
Ready? For women ages 40 to 49 the amount of radiation you have been exposed to INCREASES your chances of getting breast cancer by percentages that vary from article to article AND DO NOT REDUCE DEATHS from breast cancer. At the insistence of my mother I spoke to a doctor about this and when I brought that point up she got very cranky with me and said that may be true but it changes the treatment options available to you. Lets be real here-all treatment options are unpleasant, to put it mildly and no more women will be walking the earth having had mammograms than those who had their tumors discovered via monthly self-screenings or yearly doctor's screening-but they now have 20 years worth of radiation pumped into their breasts...
It's a very different story for women ages 50 to 69. Yearly mammograms lower breast cancer deaths by approximately 25%.
So what's the answer? There is no way in hell I'm exposing my girls to that much unnecessary radiation. I go for yearly thermography screenings which address one side of the coin but are not perfect on their own and I do my monthly self-exams regularly. My conundrum starts here-what other screening tool can I use that will not add to my chances of breast cancer both from radiation AND also the damaging of the delicate breast tissue in the unmerciful squeezing done by the mammogram. Digital ultrasound is one option I've been looking into. Another is MRI. Women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast and go for an MRI follow up have found that they often have cancer in the other breast which was MISSED by the mammogram 90% of the time... 90% failure rate in picking up the cancer in the other breast.(3) MRIs do not expose you to radiation. Problem here is-will my insurance cover it? You can't randomly go in and request an MRI to avoid mammography.
I'm not even going to address the politics here but feel free to further research that aspect of the mammogram world.
So, how will YOU care for your girls?
Professor Val
(1) http://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=mammo&bhcp=1
(2) http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/mammogram/WO00023
(3) http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/MRIContralateralRelease
(4) http://www.arcadianaturalmedicine.com/thermography.php
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wiseass... We'll get back to that.
