News New technology detects breast cancer earlier By SARA KINCAID/Bismarck Tribune May 21, 2007 A gammagram is a type of breast imaging based on PET scan technology, which uses radioactive isotopes. The isotope attaches to mitochondria, which concentrate around tumors and other anomalies. Medcenter One began using the gammagram technology in June 2006. Women have a gammagram when they have a negative mammogram but there's reasonable cause that there could be a tumor. St. Alexius Medical Center also is using new technology to detect breast cancer. Consequently, Medcenter One is detecting more cancerous tumors and at an earlier stage for women with dense breast tissue. Prior to this technology, they averaged 71/2 tumors for every 1,000 mammograms. Now they average 15 tumors for ever 1,000 mammograms. The federal guidelines want radiologists to average two to 10 finds per 1,000 mammograms. Yearly, they perform 6,000 mammograms. "The dense tissues are hiding tumors we don't know are there," he said. Decrease in Breast Cancer Rates Related to Reduction in Use of Hormone Replacement Therapy Information courtesy National Cancer Institute (NCI) Posted: 04/18/2007 The sharp decline in the rate of new breast cancer cases in 2003 may be related to a national decline in the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), according to a new report in the April 19, 2007, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The report used data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. Age-adjusted breast cancer incidence rates in women in the United States fell 6.7 percent in 2003. During this same period, prescriptions for HRT declined rapidly, following highly-publicized reports from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study that showed an increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, blood clots, and urinary incontinence among postmenopausal women who were using hormone replacement therapy that included both estrogen and progestin. The two most commonly prescribed forms of HRT in the United States, Premarin® and PremproTM, had their steepest declines starting in 2002-2003 -- from 61 million prescriptions written in 2001 to 21 million in 2004. Led by senior investigator Donald Berry, PhD., of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, the research team showed that the decrease in breast cancer incidence began in mid-2002 and leveled off after 2003. Comparing rates from 2001 and 2004 showed a decrease in annual age-adjusted incidence of 8.6 percent. The decrease occurred only in women over the age of 50 and was more evident in women with cancers that were estrogen receptor (ER) positive -- tumors that need estrogen in order to grow and multiply. The speed at which breast cancer rates declined after the WHI announcements may indicate that extremely small ER-positive breast cancers may have stopped progressing, or even regressed, after HRT was stopped. * * * 2007 © Universal Share