Xeni Jardin Tweets Breast-Cancer Diagnosis | Hacker News Reader

Xeni Jardin Tweets Breast-Cancer Diagnosis

npr.org

46 pointsmolecule7 comments

I've known that women often complain about how uncomfortable mammograms are, but looking at the picture of the machine Xeni tweeted made me realize for the first time how medieval the procedure actually is. I've seen pics of women going through the mammograms, but it's always been from behind-the-shoulder. This link has a NSFW pic of the procedure for those (like me) who didn't actually know how the procedure went: http://cancer.osu.edu/patientsandvisitors/cancerinfo/cancert...

There's got to be a better way, I can see why some women might be reluctant to have one.

Stay strong Xeni.

  There's got to be a better way

According to this TED talk from Dec 2010, there is: http://www.ted.com/talks/deborah_rhodes.html

  Deborah Rhodes: A tool that finds 3x more breast tumors,
  and why it's not available to you
  
  Working with a team of physicists, Dr. Deborah Rhodes
  developed a new tool for tumor detection that's 3 times 
  as effective as traditional mammograms for women with
  dense breast tissue. The life-saving implications are
  stunning. So why haven't we heard of it? Rhodes shares 
  the story behind the tool's creation, and the web of
  politics and economics that keep it from mainstream use.

(tl;dw for the video: it's about the dramatically improved detection of breast cancer particularly in dense breast tissue (where mammographies often fail to visibly differentiate tumors) by injecting a radiotracer and using small gamma detectors that can fit closely around the breast.)

There's also breast thermography.

http://www.iact-org.org/patients/breastthermography/what-is-...

And another technique I couldn't find a description of but I read about a while ago, where the breast temperature is altered first. Since tumors have greater blood supply, it makes breast thermography (or something like it... I forget the exact detection method) even more accurate in detecting cancer, since a tumor with greater blood supply will return to normal temperature faster than the surrounding tissue.

Breast thermography appears to be mostly quackery

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/dr-christiane-...

There is also good science behind not wanting your cancer detection regimes to be too sensitive - "false" positives complicate the picture immensely.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-early-dete...

For those interested in seeing all of her tweets, I've put them up on Storify here to make them easier to read through in order: http://storify.com/michaelschade/myfirstmammo-at-xeni

It's really sad to see the "game" and funny tweets suddenly transform into the somber, "I have breast cancer". I sincerely hope she'll beat it.

Wikipedia has interesting details in regards to the controversy surrounding mammograms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammography

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