Call to Increase M.R.I. Use for Breast Exam

Two reports being published today call for greatly expanded use of M.R.I. scans in women who have breast cancer or are at high risk for it.

The recommendations do not apply to most healthy women, who have only an average risk of developing the disease.

Even so, the new advice could add a million or more women a year to those who need breast magnetic resonance imaging — a demand that radiologists are not yet equipped to meet, researchers say. The scans require special equipment, software and trained radiologists to read the results, and may not be available outside big cities.

Breast M.R.I. costs $1,000 to $2,000, and sometimes more — 10 times the cost of mammography — so a million more scans a year would cost at least $1 billion. It is sometimes covered by insurance and Medicare, sometimes not.

One report is a set of new guidelines for using M.R.I. in women at high risk for breast cancer, and the other is a study in The New England Journal of Medicine showing that in women who have newly diagnosed cancer in one breast, M.R.I. can find tumors in the other breast that mammograms miss.

M.R.I. has drawbacks. It is so sensitive — much more so than mammography — that it reveals all sorts of suspicious growths in the breast, leading to many repeat scans and biopsies for things that turn out to be benign. For women who are likely to have hidden tumors, the prospect of such false-positive findings may be acceptable. But the risk of needless biopsies and additional scans is not considered reasonable for women with just an average risk of breast cancer, and is the main reason M.R.I. is not recommended for them.

Breast MRI is an expensive but good test that has been fairly widespread for 3 to 4 years now at decent health care systems. It is not unreasonable from a cost effective standpoint for at risk women with brca genetic markers or strong family history, and those already diagnosed with breast cancer to have the MRI. No point in subjecting the patient to the stress and moribity and cost of surgery if the disease has already spread beyond a surgical approach. It's good medicine.

What really scares the feds and insurers is coronary cta. Just about everybody is at risk for coronary artery disease.

I hope this helps..

World Health Organization Classifies Contraceptives as Highly Carcinogenic

GENEVA, Switzerland, August 8, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A press release issued on July 29th of this year by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO), declared the little publicized classification of combined estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives (OCs) as carcinogenic. The IARC placed the contraceptives into their Group 1 classification, the highest classification of carcinogenicity, used only "when there is sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in humans." (emphasis theirs)

Combined estrogen-progestogen OCs are the most commonly prescribed forms of contraceptives. According to the IARC "worldwide, more than 100 million women - about 10% of all women of reproductive age - currently use combined hormonal contraceptives."

This outright declaration by the World Health Organization of the proven dangers of combined OCs comes as an unexpected surprise to many who have been working for years to publicize their dangers. "I'm stunned that they would come out and say that, because they've been denying this for years," said Toronto area MD and medical adviser to Campaign Life Coalition, Dr. Shea. But he added, "They're really only admitting something that's been known."

In 2003 the National Cancer Institute (NCI) became one of the latest added to the list of scientific bodies that had found a substantially increased risk of several types of cancer amongst combined OC users, citing a "significant increase" of the risk of breast cancer, as well as an increase in the risk of cervical and liver cancers. Despite this admission, no significant steps have yet been taken to protect womens' health and to curb the use of combined OCs.

The IARC press release further confirms the NCI's findings, declaring that: "Previously, combined oral contraceptives had been determined to be carcinogenic to humans, but only primary liver cancer was specifically implicated. The Working Group concluded that combined oral contraceptives alter the risk of several common cancers in women. They increase a woman's risk of cervical cancer, breast cancer, and liver cancer."

Despite the immediate danger to the nearly 100 million women worldwide who are regularly ingesting the newly-defined 'carcinogenic' contraceptive pills, the IARC did not recommend that the regular prescription and easy availability of combined OCs should undergo any review. In this the IARC parallels the National Cancer Institute's study concluded with the recommendation that, instead of the obvious remedy of decreased use of the medically dangerous combined contraceptives, women should undergo frequent mammograms and Pap tests, to discover and curb already developing cancers.

See the IARC release:
http://www.iarc.fr/ENG/Press_Releases/pr167a.html

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