Digital Mammography

{text:bookmark-start} Mammograms {text:bookmark-end} Mammograms are important to have because it not only affects women over 40, but it affects young and men also. A mammogram (also called a mammography exam) is a safe, low-dose x-ray of the breast. A high-quality mammogram is the most effective tool for detecting breast cancer early. Early detection of breast cancer may allow more treatment options. It could even mean saving your breast or your life. Mammograms are probably the most important tool doctors have to help them diagnose, evaluate, and follow women who've had breast cancer. Mammograms don't prevent breast cancer, but they can save lives by finding breast cancer as early as possible. There are four important things to know

Medical technology is advancing rapidly with each passing minute. It is becoming more urgent for health care facilities to invest in equipment that is current and state of the art. Behind these advancements are proven statistics that certain equipment is a necessity when diagnosing and treating patients. We, as health care workers, owe it to our patients to have the best possible equipment in our facilities. Aside from non-melanoma skin cancer, breast cancer has become the most common cancer among women in the United States. Breast cancer does not discriminate. It is one of the

While having regular mammograms every two years does not guarantee you will not get cancer, it may however detect the disease early. Cancer screening makes sense; identify and treat cancer before you know it’s there. The theory behind this is to catch cancer in the initial stages and it will be more curable. This in turn, reduces deaths due to the disease.

Mammography saves lives, and it 's important to know that women know that they have a certain age to start before it 's too late. Mammography guidelines are the best tool available to screen for breast cancer, and It has helped many women in this world and it has also reduced the breast cancer death rate in the United States by 30 percent. And that all

Currently mammography and ultrasound are basic imaging techniques for detection and localization of breast tumor. Breast Ultrasound is a typically painless medical test that uses reflected sound waves for further evaluation of a breast abnormality or a specific area seen on mammography. Ultrasound can locate and measure abnormalities or changes to determine if a breast lump is solid or filled with fluid. A mammogram is an x-ray of the breast which may find tumors that are too small to feel. Women aged 40 to 74 years should have annual screening mammograms to lower chance of dying from breast cancer(2,15).Mammograms are less likely to find breast tumors in women younger than 50 years. This may

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death in women in the United States. A mammogram, is a simple test done with x-ray, to screen women for abnormalities of the breast. Over the past six years, the guidelines put out by various healthcare organizations have changed multiple times on when women should begin screening mammograms. Based on statistical data collected by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), 20 percent of women go without a screening mammogram for their own various reasons, of which may be lack of insurance, lack of time or lack of knowledge as to when they should be getting a screening mammogram done due to the recent changes in recommendations. The utilization of annual screening mammograms beginning at age 40 will continue to help reduce the incidence rate of women with breast cancer, or catch it early enough so that treatment can be sought.

Why are mammograms vital to one 's health? The most important reason why is because mammography detects breast cancer. "Around 12% of women in the United States will develop invasive breast cancer" (BreastCancer.Org, 2016). The most common type of breast cancer is called invasive ductal carcinoma. "This type of breast cancer is found in 80% of women" (BreastCancer.Org, 2015). Invasive ductal carcinoma remains to be a serious problem for men and women, and here is why.

In the article, Identifying Women with Dense Breasts at High Risk for Interval Cancer, it explains how that there are twenty-one states that passed a law on how women are to notified if they have dense breast and that they also need to be able to discuss supplemental imaging with their doctor. The doctors want to have direct discussions of supplemental imaging by determining which combinations of breast cancer risk and Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System are associated with breast density categories because of the fact that interval cancer rates are so high. By having high density risk can really be scaring, but it also can cause mask tumors and decrease the sensitivity of a mammography which is not good at all. In the twenty-one states that passed the law are the only

Despina Kontos, the lab PI of the department of radiology at Penn along with her team, the CBIG (Computational Breast Imaging Group) is working on developing a research program that can assess and identify if a woman is at high risk of developing breast cancer by analyzing the breast density and parenchymal texture from digital breast images. The goal is to incorporate lengthy biomarkers of cancer risk information into better assessment of breast cancer risk for women. Despina believed that technology has helped cancer research in many ways, she said that technology has “made available imaging equipment that allow us to detect cancers at very early stages when they are easier to treat. In addition, technology has provided us with the ability to analyze a

Thank you for the informative post. I liked how you compared the costs of chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer versus mammography. Looking at chemotherapy treatment, from an economic point of view. The treatment is costly and is controversial regarding the efficacy of the treatment. The patient's use of chemotherapeutic agents has led to longer treatment times; which resulted in small incremental gains in survival at considerable additional costs (Haywood et al., 2012). Moreover, healthcare decision makers are in a precarious situation. There is great tension between providing the patient, with the best available treatment options. To improve patient outcomes and the budgetary and resource impact of funding the treatments (Haywood et al.,

A portion of Baby Boomers are still prone to take their doctor's advice to heart. They still hold onto the idea that what the doctor says is best. However, the majority of Baby Boomers have some similarities of Generation X and Generation Y because unlike their parents, they are proactive. If something is wrong, you fix it before it becomes a serious problem. This new change in mind-set lead to mammography becoming as important as it is

Because there are other modalities that are available that can not only diagnose breast cancer but can diagnose it better than mammography, these other modalities should be considered before resulting to mammography (Raikhlin et al, 2015; Wise, 2015). A case study was conducted by Raikhlin et al between July 2011 and January 2013. The study selected high-risk women, between the ages of 30 to 69 that underwent screening of breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Mammography. The results of Raikhlin et al.2015 study was that malignancy was diagnosed in 13 patients, and of those 13 cancers 12 were detected by MRI and 4 by mammography. Raikhlin et al research shows that MRI can accurately diagnose breast cancer and can detect more than mammography can, and MRI can provide this diagnosis without exposing the patient to ionizing

cancer. The use of film mammography can be very hard to recognize breast cancer in

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the only accepted surgical option for breast cancer treatment was mastectomy. Mastectomy is the removal of one’s breasts. Also around this time period there were 105 new cases (for breast cancer) diagnosed for every 100,000 women in the U.S. This instrument is beneficial for finding cancer and preventing it from spreading. Since there has been no definite cure for cancer this will aid in slowing it down.​

Introduction of mammographic screening programs worldwide lead to significant increase of the rate of detection of DCIS which nowadays represents approximately 20% of all new diagnoses of breast tumours 1-4