Friday, May 3, 2013

A new way of thinking...about breast cancer screening

Screening is a test offered to a group of people to find a disease.  In the our business, usually an imaging test to find a potentially deadly disease: breast cancer. 

The problems with screening are many: financial cost, emotional cost (worry about result and false negative findings), ethics (to whom to recommend the test) and what to do with the positive result (as so many like to write about now: over treatment).

To look at mammography, specifically, lives are saved (see earlier blog posts) so the test works.  But, apparently, according to some experts, we are learning more about to whom to recommend the test.  Let's look at just one issue today.  One group recommends routine mammography beginning at age 40 and others at age 50 years.

I offer one solution: the BREVAGen Risk Assessment Test.  This test, combining your genetics (cheek swab) with features of your clinical history, gives the clearest picture we have today of your risk, so that you may decide about screening.  See http://drwinsett.blogspot.com/2012/04/more-personalized-breast-cancer.html.

Ask your doctor, if the test is right for you or ask us 512-451-5788.  If you have had the test, then tell a friend.

In the meantime, keep walking, jogging, swimming or biking, etc, to lower your risk for breast cancer!  And think about how long to do one of these to offset the calories in that latte you just had!


Together we can prevent 86,000 breast cancers this year!


This is general content and not personal medical advice.



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