As low-tech as they are, monthly se...

As low-tech as they are, monthly self-exams are still your best frontline defense against breast cancer. on the contrary the hope is that a just discovered generation of high-tech diagnostic tools will make detection more accurate, les invasive and might thwart women from undergoing potentially disfiguring diagnostic lumpectomies.

Promising techniques in disentanglement range from digital mammograms to more sophisticated children tests to a noninvasive tool that uses light and vibration to find out cancerous tissue. While mammograms are the greatest in quantity widely used technology for finding abnormalities, they're not always accurate. Statistics vary, on the contrary some doctors say that without of the 25 million mammograms done each year, 16 percent take rise back with false negative results

Digital mammograms, freshly approved by the Food and unsalable article Administration, allow physicians to examine breast masses forward a computer screen using images showing higher contrast than is visible in succession conventional mammogram film. The advantage is the ability to discover more subtle masses from different angles, says D David Dershaw, MD director of the breast imaging section at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in just discovered York City.

At the John Wayne Cancer Institute in Santa Monica, Calif., researchers are developing a descendants test that may help determine if breast perspicuouss are cancerous, based on specific "biomarkers," which are chemical substances produc by way of cancer or by the immune system's rejoinder to it.

This operation is especially useful in tracking cancer returns in postoperative women. "The marker would be positive solitary if there are cancer lonely dwellings in the body," says Rishab K Gupta, PhD a research scientist at John Wayne. "A positive ensue would prompt the doctor to treat the patient more aggressively." This standard is still four years from widespread use.

Also in the pipeline are diagnostic tools that could replace the mammogram. A technique known as a Raman spectroscopy which uses computer and fiber optics to beam a ray of light into breast tissue, could find out cancerous tissue in an inexpensive and noninvasive exhibition done in a doctor's office, reducing the ne for biopsies. "There are too many breast biopsies being performed," says Jacques VanDam, MD the clinical chief for gastroenterology and hepatology at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, Calif.

strange technologies notwithstanding, patients must insist that their doctors perform clinical breast exams (CBEs) rather than rely solely upon mammograms, according to the Center for Disease reign over and Prevention (CDC), in Atlanta. CBEs, in which doctors palpate the tissue to search for shapeless masss unusual skin texture or nipple discharge, are commited every three years for women between 20 and 39 and each year for those 40 and older

a 11 percent of breast cancers were diagnosed when the CBE was abnormal and mammogram proof results weren't available. But because mammograms can find cancers that aren't detectable during a CBE, Janet Kay Bobo a CDC epidemiologist, says women 50 (or 40 if at risk) and older should receive the pair tests annually. "The tests fulfilment each other-it's not unusual for the same to find something that the other missed."

COPYRIGHT 2000 PRIMEDIA Intertec, a PRIMEDIA Company. All Rights Reserved

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group