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What every woman needs for early detection of breast cancer is not just yearly mammograms, YES and MRIs for high risk, but self breast exams with biopsy of suspcious lumps and removal, or at least re-biopsy, of persistent and enlarging masses.
Let me assure everyone here that there is no way to get a 100% diagnosis from the following:
-breast MRIs- doesn't identify calcifications
-Breast mammograms- only70-90% effective at detection
-breast ultrasounds-even if a cyst is identified, even cysts have a 1% risk of being malignant, according to Dr Love.
-breast exam- only 50-70% accurate
-breast biopsy- may be subject to error by poor sampling or by pathology misreads.
Every patient's doctor should give the patient full disclosure of the error rate of the above procedures when they are being performed so that no one is mislead into thinking that their breast lump is benign when it may not be. What every doctor must be careful about is that many of the diagnostic tests above do detect cancer, however, theses same tests can also falsely assure that cancer doesn't exist when it does, resulting in a DELAYED rather than early diagnosis.
Becky, yes, they say breast cancer grows slowly. However, what they don't tell you is, if you are under 50 years old, the doubling time is 90 days, as opposed to 180 of women over fify years old. Also, I wonder how many mammograms are misread and falsely assure that no cancer is present.
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Robin
2002- dx her2 positive DCIS/bc TX Mast, herceptin chemo
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