When breast cancer is found early, it is
generally curable. Checking for cancer in a woman in a general
population is called screening.
Screening Tests for breast cancer include clinical breast exams and mammograms.
Woman can learn how to look for relevant lumps in her own breasts. The doctor or other health care professional can check the breasts and underarms for lumps.
Some lumps are benign land harmless like fibroadenoma. Whereas
others may show characteristics suggestive of breast cancer.
What is the “mammogram”?
“The mammogram is a special x-ray of the breast and that can often detect cancers that there are too small for a woman or her doctor to feel them. “
A lot of studies show's that mammography screening has reduced the number of deaths from breast cancer. But also, some other studies have not shown a clear benefit from mammography. So,
mammography is not a foolproof diagnostic tools.
The National Cancer Institutes in most developed countries generally recommend the following
1. Woman above 40s, should have mammography screening every one to two years.
2. Woman age 50 and older, should have mammography screening every one to two years.
3. Woman who is at higher than average risk for breast cancer, should seek expert medical advice about whether to begin screening before age 40 and how often.
If the results from mammography are abnormal, more testing is necessary.
What will be this "more testing"? The doctor call it a “biopsy”. The procedure which is needed is to take a small amount of fluid or tissue must remove from the breast to make a diagnosis. A doctor might perform fine needle aspiration, a needle
biopsy, or a surgical Biopsy.
This tissue is sent to the lab. The pathologist examines this tissue under the microscope
to see if any of the cells are cancerous.
Improvements in technological medicine have enabled doctors to use a more
effective image-guided needle breast biopsy known as stereotactic biopsy.
In developed countries, about eighty percent of women who have a surgical breast biopsy do not have cancer!
Besides mammography, magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, and 4D ultrasound
are two other techniques which the researchers believe might detect breast cancer with greater accuracy and with lower risk!
If you have questions related to this article you may e-mail me
at doctor@soontongkiong.com quoting the contents of the article.
About the author
DR SOON is a medical practitioner. He holds four degrees. MBBS
(University of Malaya), MBA (University of East Asia), LLB (Hons)
(University of Wolverhampton), Master of Medicine (Edith Cowan
University
:
Dr SOON is the owner of AskMyVisitor.com and MyScriptDoctor.com
where you can find the most up-to-date advice and information
on
many medical, health and lifestyle topics. |
