Parameter name: request
Translate Request has too much data
Parameter name: request
December 6, 2010 Try to schedule your screening mammogram during the first week of your menstrual cycle. It might make breast cancer screening more accurate for pre-menopausal women who choose to have regular mammograms. This recommendation comes from an article published online December 3 in Radiology by Diana Miglioretti, PhD, a senior investigator at Group Health Research Institute.
Dr. Miglioretti and her co-authors are working on an issue at the heart of recent controversies about breast cancer screening mammograms. In November 2009, new recommendations—including that women should discuss with their doctors whether to begin having regular screening mammograms at age 40 or wait till age 50—were issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of health care providers who generate medical guidelines based on clinical research.
Some facts related to the new recommendations prompted the study by Dr. Miglioretti and colleagues:
Mammography can detect cancer in women in their 40s.
But these women are at higher risk than are older women for a false-negative result (missing a cancer that is present) or a false-positive result (recalling a woman for further workup when cancer is not present).
False positives lead to unnecessary tests, including biopsies.
Women in their 40s tend to have dense breast tissue, making their mammograms hard to interpret. Dense breast tissue shows up as white on a mammogram and can obscure abnormal findings, which are also white.
Breast density varies slightly with menstrual cycle.Dr. Miglioretti's team asked whether mammography conducted at different times in the menstrual cycle, when breast density may be different, is more sensitive for finding breast cancers or more specific for ruling out cancer. They examined 387,218 screening mammograms from premenopausal women. Of these, 1,283 were linked to an actual case of breast cancer. The data were from the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, a network of research sites nationwide—including Group Health Research Institute, which has collected breast cancer screening data since 1994.
"Premenopausal women having regular screening mammography could benefit from scheduling their exams during the first week of their menstrual cycle," says Miglioretti. She and her collaborators found that in the first week, when breast tissue may be less dense and not engorged, mammography was more sensitive at detecting cancer. Specificity, which is the ability to reliably recognize the absence of breast cancer, did not change with menstrual cycle.
Miglioretti notes, however, that the increased sensitivity was only for women with a screen in the past two years, who were assumed to be having regular screens, and not for women being screened for the first time. Miglioretti says this result was "surprising," but offers some possible reasons. In general, when first screens find a tumor, it's relatively large. Low breast density is more important for detecting small tumors, so the menstrual cycle influence might not have been seen for first screens. "Larger tumors may be easier to see later in the menstrual cycle, but this needs to be studied," says Miglioretti. In addition, her findings do not apply to diagnostic mammography: mammography performed to work up a symptom such as a breast lump. If a woman finds a breast lump or has another breast concern, she should contact her doctor right away.
Dr. Miglioretti and her co-authors know that women can't always predict their cycle, but say if they can, scheduling during the first week may have an additional advantage. Many women experience breast tenderness in the second half of their cycle, so avoiding this time could reduce mammography discomfort.
Current recommendations are that women aged 50-74 have a routine screening mammogram every other year. Women are encouraged to consult with their health care providers to find a mammography schedule that fits their family history and personal preferences.
Provided by Group Health Research Institute
Rate this story - 5 /5 (1 vote)Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
38 minutes ago | 5 / 5 (1) | 0 |
Researchers have long argued that marriage generally reduces illegal and aggressive behaviors in men. It remained unclear, however, if that association was a function of matrimony itself or whether less "antisocial" men were ...
Medicine & Health / Research
32 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0 |
Researchers at University of Toronto and the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital, as well as colleagues in Michigan and Scotland, have developed an innovative computational approach -- the first of ...
Medicine & Health / Cancer
1hour ago | 5 / 5 (1) | 0 |
(PhysOrg.com) -- Women treated for breast cancer who have elevated levels of circulating insulin face substantially higher mortality rates than their peers with lower levels, according to a new study authored by a Yale School ...
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
1hour ago | not rated yet | 0
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy appears to be similar to maintenance antidepressant medication for preventing relapse or recurrence among patients successfully treated for depression, according to a report in the December ...
Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry
50 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0
The rate of depression treatment increased between 1998 and 2007 but at a slower rate than during the previous decade, and the percentage of patients treated with psychotherapy continued to decline, according to a report ...
Physics / General Physics 26 minutes ago | 5 / 5 (1) | 0 | (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at RIKEN, Japan's flagship research institution, have successfully devised the world’s first experimental technique for measuring ground-state hyperfine transitions of antihydrogen. ... Medicine & Health / Health 30 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0 High blood pressure may help to explain why deaths from heart disease and stroke vary according to geography, race and sex, researchers reported in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association. Medicine & Health / Health 20 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0 Children who attend large group child care facilities before age 2½ appear to develop more respiratory and ear infections at that age, but fewer such illnesses during elementary school years, according to a report in ... Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry 10 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0 Among patients with depression, the presence of many aspects of illness which may be associated with bipolar disorder does not appear to be associated with treatment resistance—evidence against the common hypothesis ... Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry 9 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0 People with psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, are 12 times more likely to commit suicide than average, according to research released today by King's Health Partners. 
Space & Earth / Space Exploration 29 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0 (PhysOrg.com) -- Cosmologists have come up with a new way to solve their problems. They are inviting scientists, including those from totally unrelated fields, to participate in a grand competition. The idea ... Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry 1 seconds ago | not rated yet | 0 Two toddlers are learning the word "cup." One sees three nearly identical cups; the other sees a tea cup, a sippy cup and a Styrofoam cup. Chances are, the second child will have a better sense of what a cup is and -- according ... 
Medicine & Health / Neuroscience 30 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0 Scientists in Bristol have uncovered some of the processes responsible for the blood flow problems connected with Alzheimer’s disease. Their findings could see existing drugs used for leaky blood vessels ... Medicine & Health / Neuroscience 56 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0 Women with transient restless legs syndrome (RLS) during pregnancy appear to be at a higher risk of developing a chronic form of RLS later in life or have the same symptoms during future pregnancies, according to new research ... 
Other Sciences / Other 2 minutes ago | not rated yet | 0 President Barack Obama urged Monday a refocus on scientific research and teaching, as was triggered by the launch of the Soviet's 1957 Sputnik satellite, saying it was key to future US prosperity, document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https://sb" : "http://b")+ ".scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js' %3E%3C/script%3E"));COMSCORE.beacon({c1:2,c2:"6035753",c3:"6035753",c4:"http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-mammogram-sensitivity-menstrual.html", //current page urlc5:"Technology - News",c6:"",c15:""});
No comments:
Post a Comment