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Frontiers in Diagnostics
| Article
# : |
21515 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 2001 |
2,733 Words |
| Author
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Michael Johns
Michael Johns is a foreign policy analyst at the Heritage
Foundation in Washington, D.C., where he specializes in the
Third World and Africa. |
Editor's Note: This article is the second in our two-part series, "New Technologies in Medicine." The first piece, "Tomorrow's Treatments," appeared in the March 2001 issue.
This year, some 180,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Like many potentially fatal diseases and conditions, the prognoses for each of these women will depend on many variables, some controllable and others not. Perhaps the most important of these will be the timing of the diagnosis. Diagnosed early, breast cancer is generally contained and defeated. Diagnosed late, it usually spreads to lymph nodes and often proves deadly. These contrasting possibilities point to an obvious conclusion: Whatever can be done to expedite accurate diagnoses of potentially deadly diseases will enormously benefit public health.
The diagnosis of breast cancer has been greatly augmented by recent advances in endoscopy and mammography. The endoscope--a device developed some 50 years ago primarily for the observation of stomach-related conditions--has been upgraded for the evaluation of esophagal, intestinal, abdominal, and breast conditions. Dr. William Dooley, director of the Breast Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, points out that new developments in endoscopy have greatly facilitated breast cancer detection. "We were able to identify a number of cancers and precancers in 20 percent of high-risk patients that had no abnormality on a mammogram," Dooley told CBS HealthWatch in December 2000.
Mammography, the traditional route for the diagnosis of breast cancer, has been enhanced by the use of computer processors in analyzing mammograms. Such instruments are
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