The November issue of the Life Extension magazine contains an interesting article about alternatives to mammography.
One mammography study exposes a woman to 0.4 mSV of radiation. This is the equivalent of about 7 weeks of background radiation from space and earth. A mammography exposes a woman to 4 times the amount of radiation of a chest X-ray. The reason that this is important is that after many years of screening for breast cancer using mammography there is a small risk of coming down with breast cancer (exactly what we want to avoid) or with leukemia from radiation of the bones.
But there are alternatives. In a Danish study 1909 women with a high risk for breast cancer were screened with yearly MRI scans and yearly mammograms for 3 years. Mammography detected 18 breast cancers, but missed 22. MRI scans detected 32 breast cancers, but missed 8. An Italian study cited in the Life Extension link above showed similar findings.
Alternative To Mammography Screening For Breast Cancer
What is the lesson to be learnt from this? The official recommendation is still to use mammography as a worldwide screening method as this method has been examined in large trials and is solid. But because of the significant amount of missed cases with mammography alone and the risk of accumulative radiation from mammography some form of screening in between with the more expensive MRI scan, which only uses harmless magnetic waves should be considered.
Read more about breast cancer diagnosis: https://nethealthbook.com/cancer-overview/breast-cancer/breast-cancer-diagnosis/
Reference: http://www.lef.org/magazine/2014/11/breast-cancer-screening-alternatives/page-01?p=1
