The Challenge of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer takes a tremendous toll in the United States. After lung cancer, breast cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer among women in the United States and is the most common non-skin-related malignancy among U.S. women. Each year, more than 180,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer are diagnosed and more than 40,000 women die from the disease. Until research uncovers a way to prevent breast cancer or to cure all women regardless of when their tumors are found, early detection will be looked upon as the best hope for reducing the burden of this disease.

48M (2009) mammograms conducted annually in U.S., 2M in U.K. with testing every three years. Neither country has many mammograms below age 40. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Life Sciences Division conducted a study detailing the dangers of mammography. “Our work shows that radiation can change the microenvironment of breast cells, and this in turn can allow the growth of abnormal cells with a long-lived phenotype that has a much greater potential to be cancerous,” says Paul Yaswen, a cell biologist and breast cancer research specialist with Berkeley Lab’s Life Sciences Division. View Life Sciences Division Report from Yaswen Lab.

The Benefits of Early Screening

Early detection of breast cancer is important as it is associated with an increased number of available treatment options, increased survival, and improved quality of life. While there is no definitive method of preventing breast cancer, early detection provides the best chance of effective treatment. However, while early detection of breast cancer can help improve outcomes, there are also risks involved with any screening program. These include the chance that a false positive or false negative diagnosis can be made. When undergoing any screening test, the risks and benefits of that test should be considered.

The First Warning ™ System aids in resolving many of the issues with current screening methods including the high rates of false positive and false negative findings. Moreover, the First™ Warning System is able to discover problems at stages far earlier than any other accepted screening methodology.

Most doctors feel that early detection tests for breast cancer save many thousands of lives each year, and that many more lives could be saved if even more women and their health care providers took advantage of these tests. Following the American Cancer Society's guidelines for the early detection of breast cancer improves the chances that breast cancer can be diagnosed at an early stage and treated successfully.