Being diagnosed with breast cancer is a shocking experience for a woman. It can be quite difficult to handle the news at first, and even harder to know how to get on with it, no matter your prognosis. It becomes even more difficult to go through the illness if you are diagnosed and you can’t afford the treatment.
For Janet Napolitano who detected her breast cancer early, “It drove home, personally, the value of early detection and education and intervention.”
The Statistics
Approximately 1 in 8 women in the United States have an incidence of developing invasive breast cancer in their lifetime, as per www.breastcancer.org. And the World Health Organization (WHO) researches and studies have stated that irrespective of developed nations or lesser developed countries, breast cancer is on the rise and is one of the most common cancers in the world. Figures presented in 2011 were as shocking as 508 000 women dying of breast cancer (Global Health Estimates, WHO 2013). Wrongly thought of as a disease of the developed world, there are studies that have proved that almost 50% of breast cancer cases and 58% of deaths occur in less developed countries (GLOBOCAN 2008).
Early Detection Can Save Lives
Breast cancer survival rates vary greatly worldwide. The dismal rates of survival in nations that are less developed can be attributed to the dearth of early detection programmes and treatment facilities. This has resulted in a high percentage of women suffering from late-stage disease.
Breast cancer has seen a phenomenal rise in the past few years in India too. Oncologists from all across the country have reported that weekly, almost 25-30 patients visit them for breast cancer. They are of the opinion that lack of early detection, as well as treatment, is the primary reason of thousands of deaths in the country. Not just that, this number is all set to go up in the future.
A research paper that was presented By the University of Portsmouth in August 2018, said that up to 70,000 Indian women died of breast cancer in the year 2012 and anticipated that the mortality rate was likely to go up to 76,000 by 2020. The study also mentioned that even young women were likely to develop breast cancer and that the average age of incidence had moved from 50 years to 30 years.
Breastfeeding can help prevent breast cancer
Breast cancer is not something one can predict but that doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be avoided. Although awareness is one of the means to inform the people, it is now a known fact that breastfeeding could act as one of the important preventive measures to avoid or lower the risk of breast cancer.
There are a lot of aspects that prove breastfeeding can lower the risks of breast cancer. For instance, breastfeeding women goes through lesser menstrual cycles as compared to those who don’t breastfeed. This leads to lesser exposure to estrogen, which is known to be instrumental in some types of breast cancers.
Breastfeeding also helps with making cells in the breast sturdier. It can lower breast cancer risk, and this holds true in cases where the woman breastfeeds for longer than 1 year. There is less benefit for women who breastfeed for less than a year.
There are several reasons why breastfeeding protects breast health:
- Making milk 24/7 restricts breast cells’ ability to behave badly
- Many women lean towards a healthier lifestyle and eat more nutritious foods (they curtail their smoking and use of alcohol) while breastfeeding
Breast milk makes the world healthier and equal.
Mammography can help save lives
When it comes to screening for breast cancer, mammography is a painless tool and one that helps with early detection. Mammograms are extremely beneficial and safe, and can significantly improve the outcome of a breast cancer diagnosis.
Mammography screening aids in the reduction of breast-cancer-related death. Statistics show that reductions can vary from about 15 to 25% in randomized trials. Recent assessments have shown a variance of 13 to 17% in meta-analyses of observational studies too.
According to BreastCancer.org, mammograms have been found to lower the risk of dying from breast cancer by 35 percent in women over the age of 50. And that number is difficult to ignore. If we look at the 2007 UK population data, we can notice that for 1,000 women who were called for biennial mammography screening for almost 20 years from age 50, 2 to 3 women can be prevented from dying of breast cancer.
So when should one get a mammogram?
A vast majority of health organizations, including the American Medical Association, the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society, say that all women begin screening mammograms at age 40 and every year after that.
If someone is at high risk for breast cancer and there is a family or personal history of breast or ovarian cancer, then the annual screenings could begin at a younger age. And it’s certainly worth it. Early detection with mammography saves lives.
MammoAssist is here to assist everyone
At Telerad Tech., we have been doing our best to enhance lives. Our best programmers have developed a solution called MammoAssist, an AI engine in a radiology ecosystem. MammoAssist algorithms analyze medical images and then combine this insight with information from the patient’s medical records to offer clinicians and radiologists support for decision making. The algorithms extract every micro information from the scanned images and enhance the ability of the radiologist to comfortably exclude negative cases, annotate the positive ones and generate a Structured Report.
Specific findings which MammoAssist detects
- Micro calcification
- Macro Calcification
- Clusters
- Lesion
- AD
- Bilateral Asymmetry
- Tissue types
All the above have a specificity and sensitivity above 90%. The Radiologists get a work list which clearly indicates true negatives (nearly 100%). This allows them to prioritize studies and spend far less time on reading studies which have been classified as negatives.
MammoAssist from Telerad Tech is here to save lives.
Telerad Tech is the brainchild of a dynamic group of technology visionaries and distinguished radiologists who have single-mindedly focused on the development of products and solutions that address the gaps and needs of Healthcare IT in general, and radiology automation systems in particular.
