MBIs Hold Hope For Early Detection

From the Mayo Clinic comes word that Molecular Breast Imaging is More Effective than Mammography at Detecting Cancer in High-Risk Women with Dense Breasts

The information released this week says "MBI is a relatively new screening method that, while more expensive than mammography, is about one-fifth of the cost of breast MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). With MBI, patients are injected with a short-living radioactive agent that is absorbed by breast tissue. This agent is tracked with a specialized camera that can distinguish healthy tissue from breast cancer tumors, as cancer cells absorb more of the radioactive agent than healthy cells. MBI is currently available at a limited number of cancer centers, but its availability is growing."

“These results suggest that MBI could become an important screening tool for women who have dense breast tissue and increased breast cancer risk,” said Carrie B. Hruska, PhD, a research fellow in the Department of Radiology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Speaking as a woman who had a negative mammogram in a breast that obviously contained a significant thickening, and was later diagnosed as cancerous after ultrasound, biopsy and MRI imaging was completed, I'm looking forward to finding out if the medical community can prevail on the insurance machine to be enlightened enough to use this information as a way that could potentially nip any future problem in my remaining breast in the bud.

Comments

[Lee Aase]

Thanks for calling attention to this, Susan. One of the things I like about blogs and YouTube is that you can provide a lot more context for stories (like in this case we could have a five-minute video explanation) on our Mayo Clinic News Blog. Our researchers still have some work to do in reducing the radiation dosage so it could be used for general screening, but the results so far are really encouraging.

[Cynthia Samuels]

Susan, forgive me for reaching out here but I could find no way to reach you (You may get a Facebook message too.) I want to invite you to a blogger telephone news conference with a major cancer researcher and an activist - about what's going on in cancer research from the biotechnology perspective. It's quite exciting - would you mind letting me know how to reach you? csamuels@cobblestone-associates.com or 202-726-0435
Thanks in advance for forgiving this outreach here - Cindy

[jonny goldstein]

I just wish we had national healthcare like most civilized rich countries. Then we'd just have one entity to badger instead of a zillion companies.

[Katelyn Buress]

Susan,

I wanted to let you know about some work that some of my colleagues at the GE Global Research Center have been working on to improve breast cancer treatment and diagnosis. Right now on the GRC Blog, www.FromEdisonsDesk.com, one of my female colleagues, Dr. Cynthia Davis, has posted a video blog entry on the work she is doing in MR-guided Focused Ultrasound to create a non-invasive treatment for breast cancer.

It is really pretty interesting stuff, and one that I thought you might be even more interested in, as it related to this post, will be up shortly featuring Andrea Schmitz's work in 3-D tomography for breast cancer diagnosis.

Check out the blog if you are interested at www.FromEdisonsDesk.com. Call me crazy, but I just think that the fact that these talented women are dedicating themselves to improve breast cancer treatment and diagnois is pretty incredible.