The role of mammography in breast cancer prevention

Contemporary breast imaging and concordance assessment: a surgical perspective

Disease conditions of the breast are very common. Patients with such conditions often present to surgeons for both diagnostic evaluation and treatment. Nearly all of them will require breast imaging. This article summarizes the use, applicability, and concordance assessment of mammography, ultrasonography, and magnetic resonance imaging in patients who have breast complaints or abnormalities on clinical examination or imaging.

Mammography screening: addressing myths and other reasons for noncompliance

In the Kaiser Permanente (KP) Georgia Region, a program of extensive mailings, call center contacts, and other avenues of patient education has been designed to increase the number of women having mammograms and to decrease the mortality rate from breast cancer. Citing statistics from various studies nationwide and in the Atlanta area, the authors outline some reasons for patient resistance to mammography and describe the resulting development of a "patient fact sheet" and other interventions intended to increase the rate of screening mammograms conducted in our target population of KP members.

Nuclear matrix proteins as biomarkers for breast cancer

Breast cancer remains a leading cause of cancer death in women despite widespread screening, in part because screening mammography has high rates of false-negative results and because many women decline to have routine mammograms. The development of sensitive and specific assays for breast tumor markers would improve detection and facilitate screening, diagnosis, therapeutic monitoring and surveillance for recurrence. Nuclear matrix proteins (NMPs) are promising candidates for tumor markers because they are involved in malignant transformation. Therefore, they may be useful for screening and early diagnosis of small tumors. Proteomic analysis was used to demonstrate that a 28.3 kD serum protein, designated NMP66, can distinguish malignant disease from benign conditions and normal controls. NMP66 is now being evaluated as a potential biomarker for early breast cancer detection in large-scale clinical trials.