From the July 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

A breakthrough retrospective clinical study published in the American Journal of Roentgenology confirmed MBI’s high incremental cancer detection rate. MBI was able to detect 7.7 cancers per 1,000 women screened that were not found using mammography. Approximately 85 percent of these cancers were invasive and 82 percent of the invasive cancers were also node negative, meaning they were detected at an earlier stage and presented a better prognosis.

This complemented an earlier Mayo Clinic prospective study in the AJR in February 2015. While mammograms may fail to detect breast tumors due to tissue density, MBI highlights metabolic activity in these tumors despite breast density, leading to an earlier diagnosis.


Question 3: Pre- and Post-Surgical Screenings: Are you minimizing your patients’ odds of requiring multiple breast surgeries or experiencing a recurrence of the disease following a surgery?

MBI can be used for pre-surgical planning as well as post-surgical follow-ups and monitoring, particularly in women who have dense breast tissue. Anatomical diagnostic tools cannot highlight cancer or metabolic disease, yielding high false negatives. For a patient with a known cancer, the use of MBI ensures a more complete diagnosis of the disease scope. This includes cases where MBI identified more extensive disease, changing the surgical approach and potentially the clinical outcomes. MBI can be utilized to screen for cancer in women post-lumpectomy, monitoring for residual or recurrence of disease.

Using MBI on breast cancer patients before and after surgery can help ensure nothing was missed as well as make recurrence of the disease less likely.

Question 4: Overall Breast Care: Are you confident that the secondary screening methods you offer are the most accurate for all types of breast tissue?

Compared to MBI, using ultrasound for secondary screenings for patients with dense breasts or MRI for patients with high risk yield higher false positive rates. To avoid this significant risk, it’s important to ensure that your facility is doing everything in its power to be clinically accurate and combating the 40,000 deaths annually at the hands of breast cancer.

Dense breast notification laws – now in 32 states – are beginning to change this landscape by requiring that providers send women a letter following a mammogram informing them of their dense breast status. But even aside from extending these laws across the country, we have a long way to go. Many of these laws don’t require providers to explain the meaning of dense breast tissue or the risks involved or what to do as a next step, let alone that MBI is an important tool at their disposal.

July 2017 Magazine

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