Orble - Women are like Fine Wines,We Get Better with Age!

Women are like Fine Wines,We Get Better with Age!

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Happy Mother's Day

May 13th 2012 22:49

A simple wish Happy Mother's Day!! Hope your day has been filled with happiness. I have thought a lot about my mom today. The older I get,the more I miss her and in many ways,the more I understand her more...

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Breast Cancer: Women With False Positive Mammograms at Higher Risk

April 30th 2012 00:15

Breast Cancer: Women With False Positive Mammograms at Higher Risk

A new study suggests "false alarms" in breast cancer screenings might not be so benign after all.

A Danish study of more than 58,000 women found those who had false positive mammograms, meaning the results suggested breast cancer when there was none, had a 67 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer later in life compared with women who had negative mammograms.

"The excess breast cancer risk in women with false-positive tests may be attributable to misclassification of malignancies already present at the baseline assessment ... or to a biological susceptibility for developing breast cancer in some women without malignancies at baseline," the study authors wrote, describing how dense, irregular breast tissue may disguise or develop into cancer.

The study was published today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
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But Seriously,Ultrasound helps catch cancer in higher-risk women

April 4th 2012 03:12

I came across this article I felt I had to post here

Ultrasound helps catch cancer in higher-risk women

By Genevra Pittman
NEW YORK | Tue Apr 3, 2012 4:30pm EDT
(Reuters Health) - Adding an ultrasound to annual mammograms for women at higher-than-average breast cancer risk helps catch more early-stage tumors -- but also ups the chance that healthy women will get follow-up biopsies unnecessarily, according to a new study.

For most women who fit into an "intermediate-risk" category -- including those with very dense breasts, or who have a family member with breast cancer -- the extra chance of false positives and more testing is probably worth it, said the study's lead author.

That's because along with those women's higher chances of getting cancer, mammograms may not work as well on women with denser breasts, for example.

"The vast majority... of women who are well aware of these risks would still gladly choose to have the ultrasound, knowing that it increases the chance of finding cancer if it's present and finding it early," said Dr. Wendie Berg, from Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh.

Still, one researcher not involved in the study questioned whether that was feasible, or even a good idea.

Recommendations from cancer and radiology organizations call for women who are at high risk of cancer, including those with BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations, to get magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in addition to annual mammography.
But guidelines haven't specified whether extra tests are also the best option for those in the intermediate-risk category -- which may include up to 30 percent of women, Berg said.

"Anything that we propose to be extra in them, that's a lot of women," she told Reuters Health.

Berg said adding annual MRIs -- which start at about $500 each -- isn't such a practical or cost-effective option, and many people feel claustrophobic during the procedure or just don't like it. So she and her colleagues wanted to see if ultrasounds, which are less bothersome and run for under $100, might be an alternative addition to mammography.

Their study involved about 2,700 women seen at 21 different sites. More than half of those women had a history of breast cancer themselves -- which also puts someone in the intermediate-risk category.

Every year for three years, women had both a mammogram and an ultrasound to check for signs of cancer. Finally, the researchers offered participants one MRI as a final check.

Over the study period, there were 111 new cases of breast cancer, 59 of which were picked up during mammography. Another 32 tumors that weren't spotted on mammograms were found with ultrasound -- 30 of which were invasive cancers, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Out of 612 women who opted for MRI, nine more cancers that hadn't shown up on other screening tests were detected. Eleven cancers were diagnosed at some point during the study through means other than screening.

A 'SUBSTANTIAL RISK' OF FALSE POSITIVES

Despite the additional cancers caught with ultrasounds and MRIs, there were downsides to the extra tests. One out of every 20 women had to have a breast biopsy because of ultrasound results, though only a small fraction of those ended up having cancer.
"It is a substantial risk," Berg said.

"We are always in a quandary because we don't know what to do with these intermediate-risk patients," said Dr. Regina Hooley, who studies breast cancer screening at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven.

"MRI is costly and it's invasive," Hooley, who wasn't involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.

"I think (ultrasound) is actually a very, very good alternative for these patients and I would probably recommend that they just get ultrasound."

But Dr. Susan Roth, a radiologist from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said the rate of false positives with ultrasound was concerning.

"Even if you believe in screening ultrasound, the dilemma I have is the number of biopsies I'd have to do to find those cancers," said Roth, who also wasn't part of the research team.

Ultrasounds are time-consuming, she said, and many facilities that do cancer screening are strapped as it is. And insurance companies may not want to pay for annual ultrasounds, given how many women qualify as intermediate-risk.

"The more tests you add, we'll find more cancers, and they're real," Roth told Reuters Health. "The question is, what are we willing to pay for that, in terms of the downsides and the dollars?"

Hooley pointed out that neither ultrasound nor MRI can replace annual mammography in women with higher-than-average cancer risk.

For women at normal risk of breast cancer, the government-backed U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says evidence supports mammograms only, done every other year between age 50 and 74.

Regarding the chance of false positives when other screening methods are added to the mix, Berg said women who fully understand the risks, including the need for further invasive testing, should be able to make an informed choice about what test or tests are best for them.

SOURCE: bit.ly/hwxtTL Journal of the American Medical Association, online April 3, 2012.

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Women

March 23rd 2012 18:46

Women,we come in all sorts of shapes,size,color,age... We tend to be judged (speaking as an American) by just those things. What a shame! Or should I say,shame on America

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Happy International Women's Day

March 9th 2012 02:54

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Smile...with a Quote...

February 25th 2012 00:16

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult

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Women's Quotes

February 7th 2012 01:01

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”Beverly Sills

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Christmas Quotes

December 21st 2011 16:30

Whatever your beliefs...may the holidays bring you happiness,peace

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9 Words Women Use

December 6th 2011 21:36

9 WORDS WOMEN USE

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Happy Thanksgiving

November 24th 2011 21:16

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving!!!!

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