This article is from the WebMD Feature Archive

The Present and Future State of Breast Cancer Screening

An array of high-tech detection techniques and devices is on the scientific horizon.

By Dulce Zamora WebMD Feature

Reviewed By Michael Smith, MD on Monday, September 23, 2002

Cora's doctor found a tiny growth in her right breast when she was 55 years old. To determine whether it was cancer, he inserted a small tube inside her nipple to extract cells for study under a microscope.

The results were inadequate so he asked her to come in for another visit. This time, she was given anesthesia so he could surgically remove the suspicious tissue for examination.

Much to Cora's relief, the lump turned out to be benign, but recalling the whole process is enough to make the now 60-year-old tax auditor cringe.

"The nipple thing was very painful," she says, associating the unpleasant experience with other cancer-screening procedures she considers torturous, such as the mammogram, which involves placing one breast at a time on a cold device then flattened for filming.

Still, to this day, Cora, much like many of her peers, diligently subjects herself to such tests. Why?

Many shake it off as a small sacrifice for peace of mind. After all, one in nine women eventually develops breast cancer. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in females after lung cancer.

Yet medical visionaries are hoping women won't have to be martyrs for long. While mammography is still widely regarded as the gold standard for detecting malignancies, an array of new or improved technologies is now on the horizon -- using magnets, electricity, sound waves, and cellular biology as screening tools.

Some methods promise to make breast cancer screening more comfortable for women. A number pledge better accuracy, or less chance of an inaccurate report. Still others are whispered to be borne out of entrepreneurial motivations.

There are doctors who dream of someday being able to take a simple blood test to determine whether a woman definitely has breast cancer, or will develop it in the future. Thus, in determining the threat, they hope to be able to tell a woman when she likely will have breast cancer, and what can be done about it.

But word on the scientific street is that such diagnostic wizardry will not be available anytime soon. Experts can only be optimistic that the present crop of newly improved or experimental screening techniques will improve what's out there now.

Improving familiar devices

Recently, the accuracy of mammograms has been called into question and experts don't even agree on the appropriate use of this test -- some recommend starting routine mammograms at 40 while others say 50. So researchers are furiously looking for a better approach to diagnosing breast cancer than the standard X-ray mammogram.

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