Breast cancer is more common than you would think. One out of every seven women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Ever sat in a waiting room waiting for a mammogram? Every seventh woman who walks through those doors will be diagnosed with breast caner. Look around at work. How many women work there? Odds are, one in seven will be diagnosed. It is overwhelming when you think about it.
I just read a news article that I found interesting. If you have family history of breast cancer, perhaps you should discuss this with your doctor.
MRIs Better at Detecting Breast Cancer
By Gene Emery, Reuters
BOSTON (July 28) - Women with a family history of cancer may be better off getting an MRI than a mammogram, the more common test to screen for the disease that strikes more than 200,000 U.S. women every year, a new study showed.
A group of Dutch researchers found that MRI scans, which use strong magnetic and radio waves to produce pictures of the body from any angle, have an 80 percent success rate of detecting cancer, far higher than other tests.
"MRI appears to be more sensitive than mammography in detecting tumors in women with an inherited susceptibility to breast cancer," said the team, led by Mieke Kriege of the Rotterdam Family Cancer Clinic in Holland.
The group reported its findings in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Breast exams found the cancer only 18 percent of the time while the mammograms, X-ray tests that produce an image of the breast, worked in 33 percent of the cases, the doctors found.
