Taken from the website www.breastthermography.com. If you have a chance, click on the link. The site has a lot of facts I had never heard and it also gives very detailed information on thermography - a procedure we don't hear about very often.
Breast cancer is the leading killer of women ages 35 to 54.
Breast cancer in women under 50 is more aggressive and virulent.
70% of breast cancers occur in women without a family history of the disease.
Despite modern technology, breast cancer mortality has not been significantly reduced in more than 40 years. The main reasons for this are:
90% of breast cancer cases are diagnosed with a palpable tumor size.
Large numbers of women are without screening tests until a palpable lesion is felt.
As a stand-alone screening test, mammography misses approximately 20% of all cancerous tumors (false negatives).
The majority of breast cancers revealed by mammography are not detected early enough.
25% of women die within the first 5 years and 40% within 10 years of their diagnosis.
Over 90% of women diagnosed with Stage 1 cancers are alive 5 years later, unfortunately only 58% of breast cancers are diagnosed at this stage.
Most cancers take 8-10 years to grow to 1 cm in size, but only 1.5 years more to grow to 3.5 cm.
No one procedure or method of imaging is solely adequate for breast cancer screening.
Sources: 1997-2000 Index Medicus - ACS, NEJM, JNCI, Lancet, BMJ, J Breast
