Thursday, April 11, 2013

Parental Descretion Advised - Womens Health


The past week was medical stuff ... due to the fact that my mother had breast cancer I am considered high risk so they (medical professionals) want me to have a mammogram and such every year now since I turned 50.   I don’t like getting an x-ray ... seems counter intuitive to zap yourself with radiation every year to check if you have cancer ... so I have been investigating other options.   During my research I discovered that this technology is used a lot as a diagnostic tool (not just for breast exams) and is reputed to find the potential for tumor growth much earlier than an x-ray and eliminates the radiation factor unless absolutely necessary.
This is kind of personal yet I worry that many women are not aware that they have any other choice outside of the standard mammogram.  So if you need more info here is a link to a website,
http://www.iact-org.org/articles/articles-second-look.html   read this one start to finish as it presents both sides of the story.
I still take the report to my doctor and get a referral for an ultrasound of any suspicious areas, which they always did after the mammogram anyway, now I just skip the mammogram and the radiation.  This is new and controversial but for the earlier treatment alone I believe it is worth investigating.

1 comment:

  1. I would like to speak to this..as a mammo tech. I certainly am not against thermography--the more screening tests we have for cancer the better! That being said, its not always a doctor looking at your results--do check your qualifications at whatever place you go. Also, as far as the radiation dose goes you receive about 0.2mGy of radiation for a mammo--background radiation from concrete, the sun, etc is about 2.5-3mGy a year-the dose is very low. Why don't we just do ultrasound? Because all it tells us is if its solid or fluid. It doesn't tell us where, whats involved. One test that is proving very good without radiation is MRI, but unfortuneatly not very available.

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