New Options Available in the Fight Against Breast Cancer

 

Image courtesy of Flickr

 

The only option women have had for the past 45 years to check the health of their breasts is the screening mammogram.   Our doctors or friends didn’t really explain anything about the mammogram just that it was used to find breast cancer.   As I started to investigate the mammogram I discovered that there were some inconsistencies.  I was not going to trust my chances of finding breast cancer to a technology that was inaccurate.  Here are three facts I discovered:

 

 1) only the breast tissue that “hangs off” the chest can be seen in the mammogram film, missing the upper outer quadrants of the breast where 50% of breast cancer is found.

 

2) the amount of false positives is out of this world! Even with a specificity of 90%, most abnormal mammograms are false-positives. (Source: National Cancer Institute). The mammogram sees a mass but has no idea that it is just hard glandular tissue or a cyst forcing us into follow up tests, pain and fear.

 

3) the amount of radiation in ONE mammogram film is equal to twenty chest x-rays.   Having implants (which is a whole other story) means four films on each side or 120 chest x-rays of ionizing radiation each time I had my yearly mammogram. Increasing my risk of breast cancer 1-3% each year.

 

Well if that doesn’t make you stop and think!   Not to mention dense breast tissue which is like looking for a snowman in a snowstorm on a mammogram.

 

Today we have additional options for breast screening exams such as breast thermography and SureTouch.   Unfortunately new technology takes forever to become part of our vocabulary unless it’s plastered all over the TV and radio.   Breast thermography has been around since the 1980’s so many of us know about this test.   Finding a group of blood vessels that are generating heat can be seen on a thermal image but the drawback is you still don’t know if the blood vessels are caused by inflammation or they are feeding a growing tumor.

 

 

SureTouch Offers Safe Alternatives:

What about SureTouch?   It is a safe, FDA-cleared tactile sensor that feels down to the chest wall without pain or radiation.   How?   Simply it’s the “princess and the pea” theory. In the SureTouch probe are 192 sensors that capture the sense of touch to feel the tissue and record what is “pushing back”.   Just like the pea was felt under layers of fabric, lumps are felt through layers of breast tissue.   We have lots of lumps in breast tissue but measuring their elasticity is the key!   Cancer is as hard as a walnut, unlike other breast lumps such as glandular tissue, cysts, fibroids, etc. Cancer is also irregular in shape unlike the other tissue in the breast. Once SureTouch locates a change in tissue thickness it then takes a video snapshot of the lump so you can see if its smooth or irregular eliminating the false positives of the mammogram.

Statistics say that most breast cancers are found by self-exam or by accident, not by modern medical technology. The important issue is that we cannot feel a lump until it is 10mm in size which means the lump has been growing for quite some time before it is found by self exam. SureTouch is FDA approved to document palpable lesions as small as 5mm in size. This means SureTouch can locate the lump anywhere in the breast tissue including in the armpit area years before you can find it yourself. (Source: OC Breast Wellness).

The nurses at OC Breast Wellness are CBE certified (clinical breast examination) and know breast tissue.   All armpit and breast areas are covered and recorded for future comparison.   It takes about 10 minutes a breast, depending on the amount of breast tissue you have, and you’re done.

The inventor of SureTouch, Dr Jae Son having gone through the frustrating process of breast cancer diagnosis with his mother (she is alive and well after 10 years) motivated his drive to develop a more effective tool to aid physicians with breast cancer.

So the next time your annual exam comes along think about including other tools available now in the fight against breast cancer.

 

Janice Salmon, Director of OC Breast Wellness, Fountain Valley, CA

Janice Salmon has been a serial entrepreneur for 37 years.  OC Breast Wellness is her sixth start-up company. Janice is responsible for bringing this company’s vision to a national audience. Launching in Southern California, she is creating a model for a multi modal approach to the early detection of breast cancer, using the SureTouch digital palpation imaging and breast thermography exams. These state-of-the-art, life-saving technologies will be the key to peace of mind and empowerment for women of all ages.

 

Janice is also a mother of three, a US Open Swing dance champion, the Toastmaster Speaker of the Year for 2010, 2012, 2014 and a volunteer with the Orange County Chapter of SCORE, helping other small businesses grow.

 

www.ocbreastwellness.com

www.suretouch.us

 

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