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HealthFirst-New breast scan

Friday, September 14, 2007

UNDATED (WJRT) (WJRT) -- (05/24/07)-- Each year, nearly 180,000 women the U.S. will learn they have breast cancer.

Mammograms are the gold standard for finding breast cancers, but they don't catch them all.

HealthFirst reporter Leslie LoBue explains why a new high-tech scanner will make breast cancer easier to find.

Pam Eckert has never had breast cancer, but it's played a big role in her family's life. "My mom was diagnosed in her 30s with breast cancer. My sister was diagnosed when she turned 40."

Pam had her first mammogram at age 28. "I want every test possible so that if I have it, I find it early."

That's why she joined a study on the cone beam breast C-T scanner, a new way to spot hard-to-detect cancers that mammograms miss.

Dr. Avice O'Connell, is a radiologist at the University of Rochester in New York. "We know that even the best mammographer in the world will miss 10 to 15 percent of breast cancers in certain types of breasts."

Unlike mammograms, the scanner does not compress the breast. Women simply place each breast in a hole as the scanner captures 3-D images.

"In certain people with the difficult type of breast, it may indeed improve the detection of small cancers," O'Connell said.

About 50 percent of women have dense breast tissue, making cancers harder to find. The ability to rotate the breast and view it from any angle has doctors excited about the future.

"It is very exciting to us as radiologists to think that this might down the road help us to find those small early cancers," said O'Connell.

"Just because I have escaped 40 and haven't had breast cancer doesn't mean that I don't have risk still for that," Eckert said.

If she does get it, she knows catching it early will mean more time for her and her family.

The scanner is still under study at the University of Rochester, as well as the University of California in Davis.

Dr. O'Connell says the scanner could also help doctors better plan radiation treatment for women already diagnosed with breast cancer. Larger studies are needed before the FDA can approve the scanner.

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