(From My City Wellness by Cheryl Dennison/Photography by Eric Dutro, Fall, 2017)
Using his years of aviation training, Pilot and Radiologist David Strahle of Michigan thought about the challenges of imaging the dense breasts using the standard protocol of mammography from a former aviation student. "He got me thinking of a way to improve breast imaging," Strahle explains. "Trying to find cancer using mammography in women with dense breast tissue is just as difficult as finding a thunderstorm hidden by dense clouds." He understood that xray technology is limited in finding cancers in dense breasts, thus causing too many women who participate in screening to be blindsided by a late diagnosis. Studying MRI and its sensitivity to 'seeing' cancer in dense breasts, Dr. Strahle tested a shorter protocol, known as rapid MRI, and the results were astounding.
From 2009-2011, 671 women who had a negative mammogram within the prior 30 days were rescanned, at no cost, with breast MRI. Out of the 671 scanned, there were 452 missed lesions (both benign and malignant) discovered in 234 women. It was determined that 55 percent of the women who were scanned had dense breast tissue of 50 percent or greater and all the "misses" were in that group.
The research also revealed the ability to cut down the MRI scan time from 28 minutes to just six minutes in addition to reducing the false positives (suspicious lesions that end up being negative for cancer). Strahle believes the most important factor in stopping breast cancer deaths is to find it super-early. "Forget what's causing it;' he says. "Find it and kill it and go on living your life. We now have the technology to detect breast cancer early enough to break the chain; we can keep women from dying of this disease:'
You can read the full article here.