A Breast Oncologist, Diagnosed through The Disease

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Marisa Weiss has treat thousands of women diagnose with breast cancer. But in April of 2010, the creator of the website breastcancer.org found herself on the other side of the investigative table. After a routine mammogram, she was diagnose with a breast tumor. "When it happen to me, it was a shock," the oncologist tells Terry Gross. "I was a very busy person and during a very busy day like anyone else, I had to rush up to the mammography department, get all the clothes off, wait in that gown, wait to be called and I thought it was now going to be like any other year."

The radiologist who inspect Weiss' films told her that he saw something worrisome and was not sure what it was. "Those words were grave words," she recalls. "And I got an meeting to come back the after that day." After another mammogram inveterate calcifications in her breast, Weiss had an MRI a more responsive diagnostic test for dense breasts like hers. "After the MRI, I came out and looked at the faces of the radiology technicians who function the machines and they would not look at me," she says.

"They were shun my look. So I know then that it was severe. And then I go from there to the radiology reading room to meet with a radiologist who pull the images fresh up on the screen and like a glow bulb there it was, a tumor in my left breast that was obviously a cancer." Weiss is lucky. Her cancer was discovered early on and her prognosis is excellent. She says without a custom mammogram, she might not have been so fortunate. In 2009, a report issue by the U.S. preventive Services job Force said that mammograms were needless for women under 50 and women over 50 only needed mammograms each other year.

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CT scans may reduce lung cancer mortalities

Low dose computed tomography scans might help decrease lung cancer mortalities among heavy smokers and former smokers, according to a fresh report. But further analysis of the findings is required before screening suggestion can be issued for the disease, said a statistician for the study. There is no generally received screening test for lung cancer. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said proof is insufficient to suggest for or against screening asymptomatic people for the disease with either low dose CT scans, chest x-rays, sputum cytology or a grouping of these tests.

Results of the study, which were available online Nov. 2 in Radiology, found that CT scans reduced the mortality rate of deep smokers and former smokers by 20.3% contrasts with chest x-rays. The National Cancer Institute sponsored the study. "For the first time, we have specific proof that screening for lung cancer can decrease mortality," said Constantine A. Gatsonis, PhD, a guide statistician for the study and a professor of biostatistics at Brown University. He supports physicians to consider the new data when they are deciding what test to suggest for screening a patient's lungs.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer connected death among men and women in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and avoidance. The NCI estimates that 222,520 new cases of lung cancer will be identify this year, and 157,300 people will die of the disease. Researchers inspect data on 53,456 present and former heavy smokers age 55 to 74 who were register in the National Lung Screening Trial between August 2002 and April 2004. In participants smoked at least one pack a day for 30 years and had no signs, symptom or history of lung cancer.

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