Test may detect breast cancers that mammograms miss

Some Arizona women who have been told that they do not have breast cancer after undergoing a mammogram may actually have the disease. A different kind of screening called molecular breast imaging, or MBI, can detect cancers that mammogram screenings miss. Researchers published a study on MBI results in the August edition of the American Journal of Reontgenology.

To conduct the study, researchers looked at data from patients who had underwent mammograms and molecular breast imaging at ProMedica Breast Care in Toledo, Ohio during a three-year time period. Between 2011 and 2014, Gamma Medica’s LumaGEM MBI system was used to screen 1,696 women who had already underwent mammograms. The supplemental screening with MBI was used on women with dense breast tissue.

The study showed that ProMedica’s supplemental screening program detected 13 malignancies in patients that had tested negative for cancer after undergoing mammograms. A vast majority of the cancers that were detected with the supplementary screening were node negative, meaning that the cancers had been discovered at an early stage before they had spread to the lymph nodes. MBI can deliver results almost right after the test is completed, and it produces around four times as much radiation as a digital mammogram.

Some patients are not given supplementary tests for breast cancer despite having risk factors for misdiagnosis like dense breast tissue. A patient who determines that a breast cancer diagnosis was delayed because of a doctor’s error may wish to pursue financial compensation by filing a medical malpractice lawsuit with the assistance of an attorney.