Since, like many other families, mine has been touched by breast cancer, I take an active interest in preventive measures and advances in screening. So it was with great pleasure that I recently completed a brochure on Breast Thermography. Popular in Europe, Breast Thermography has not yet been accepted by North American mainstream medicine as a bona fide screening technique, yet the technology is capable of detecting cancers up to eight years before screening mammography. Better still, it involves no radiation and no uncomfortable compression.BT works by measuring the heat given off by the breast tissue. When a cancer is in its earliest stages - just a few hundred cells - it begins to create blood vessels to feed itself, a process known as angiogenesis. These new blood vessels generate heat, which is picked up by the sensitive BT camera. While the technique isn't intended to replace mammography, it paints a picture of what may be going on when a cancer is just 200 - 300 cells into division, whereas a mammogram detects a cancer when it has grown to over 1,000,000 cells. This allows time for non-invasive preventive procedures to address the abnormal cells, rather than surgery, radiation and/or chemotherapy. Follow-up screening can monitor the situation and determine if additional treatment is necessary.
Is it expensive? No. At a little over $300, it costs way less than a designer coffee, spread over the year. If you live in the Vancouver area, you can schedule an appointment for a BT scan at Finlandia Natural Health Centre, 604.733.5323.
3 comments:
Thanks for this useful piece of info. Do you know he exact accuracy rate of thermography? My doc. says it's less accurate tham a mammogram.
I'd like to know the answer to the other comment too. It sounds very impressive though and I hate that whole squashing routine. Does a person have it in addition to mammograms or instead of them?
Anon: It isn't "less accurate" than a mammogram and can certainly show cancers or precancers many years earlier than mammos. That is certainly something that is being passed around though. I have seen the stats somewhere so I will go and check.
Marilyn: It is up to each woman to make up her own mind on whether to have one, the other or both :) Some women feel more secure having both, others don't like radiation being passed through them and so opt for thermography only. I realize I am answering this late.
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