Hello bOObs Bloggettes:
I thought we’d get back to basics on thermography. To understand why thermography isn’t more widely used in the U.S. and why your doctor doesn’t know about it or understand it, we need to go back to a 1970s study called the Breast Cancer Detection Demonstration Project (BCDDP), undertaken by the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
An overview of the BCDDP study on breast cancer screening, per the NCI:
“BCDDP was a breast cancer screening program conducted between 1973 and 1980. Sponsored by the American Cancer Society and the NCI, the BCDDP provided up to five annual breast examinations to 283,222 women at 29 screening centers in 27 cities throughout the United States. A follow-up study of a subset of the BCDDP participants (n = 64,182) was begun by the NCI in 1980. It included all participants who received a diagnosis of breast cancer during the five-year screening program, all who underwent breast surgery during the screening program with no indication of malignancy, all who had recommendations by the Project for a surgical consultation, but did not have either a biopsy or aspiration performed, and a sample of women who had neither surgery nor recommendation for surgical consultation during screening participation.
“The follow-up study was conducted in four phases, the last of which was carried out between 1995 and 1998. Information on all cancer diagnoses, mortality, and a variety of exposures, including exogenous hormone use, adolescent and adult diet, physical activity, body weight, and occupation was collected over the four phases of the follow-up study. Mortality is being updated through 2005.”
So that was the verbose overview of the BCDDP study.
However, when I spoke with a well-known thermographer/interpreter a few years ago, he explained that the study arm for thermography in the BCDDP was really messed up. Instead of hiring qualified thermographers to run that part of the study, they instead used radiologists who:
1. had no clue about how to conduct a thermogram on women; and
2. had no clue about how to interpret a thermogram’s outcome.
What happened in the end was tragic for women. The BCDDP study heads decided just to throw out thermography on its ear early on and went on their merry way studying mammograms and ultrasounds as screening tests.
Now, here’s the big rub: Thermography getting thrown out of the study was largely interpreted by those in the medical world like this: Thermography doesn’t work at all and is a hoax. And ever since, all you hear out of a doctor is “thermography was studied and proved to be inadequate as a screening tool, so here’s your prescription for a mammogram.”
What’s interesting is that when I met for a second time with (now former) Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society Dr. Otis Brawley, I explained this problem to him. He in turn and out of the blue reflected out loud that the BCDDP’s mammography arm wasn’t run very well either in this huge multi-year study that cost US taxpayers millions of dollars.
Good grief…
And again, it unfortunately ended in thermography getting a black eye that it still carries with it today.
In reality, they need to study thermography again as a breast cancer screening tool, and do it head-to-head against the almighty mammogram. Dr. Brawley agreed with this idea, which I presented to him at that meeting.
So with that blessing, I tried to convince the recently resuscitated Cancer Moonshot Program to take it on — but got no response from the White House whatsoever, which, at the very least, was quite rude.
I’m still trying to figure out how to get a trial going, but it’s a large undertaking and will take a large chunk of my time to do so (I lobbied Congress for 12 years so I have some experience in this area). Any thoughts out there on how to orchestrate this, please let me know!
NOTE: In upcoming blogs, I still promise to dive into the different types of thermography when I find time to research them; it’s more complicated I have found than it seems.
Blog at you soon, thanks for reading and helping to spread the word! (Please see the “share” links below.) And we’d love to hear comments from you! (see below as well)
Stay healthy,
Megan
Megan Smith, M.S.
Director, bOObs: The War on Women’s Breasts
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