Dear AuntMinnie Member,
How do you handle patients who want to know about their breast density? If you live in a U.S. state that doesn't require mandatory patient notification of density status (and that's almost all of them), you're facing this question increasingly often.
However, breast care centers can turn the density conundrum to their advantage, according to a presentation at this week's National Consortium of Breast Centers (NCBC) meeting in Las Vegas. We're featuring an article on the talk in our Women's Imaging Digital Community.
Breast centers that offer patients services and information tailored to their breast density could develop a competitive advantage over sites that do not, according to the talk by Jerry Kolb, an executive with a firm that develops breast density software.
And it's important to plan ahead. Breast density advocates are aggressively pushing density legislation on a state-by-state basis, and early experiences in Connecticut -- the first state to require density notification -- weren't entirely smooth. Read more by clicking here.
In other news from the NCBC meeting, learn how important it is for breast care centers to track quality -- such as callback rates and biopsy effectiveness -- in an era of healthcare reform. Such efforts are crucial in the emerging era of evidenced-based medicine, according to an article you can read by clicking here.
MRI of astronauts
There are lots of well-known potential hazards to space travel, but eye damage is not one you've probably heard of. That may change after the publication this week of a paper in Radiology: In the study, researchers used 3-tesla MRI to detect optical abnormalities in the eyes of astronauts who have spent prolonged periods in space.
Degradation of visual acuity is a recently recognized phenomenon related to space travel, so the group from Texas used MRI to scan astronauts who had returned to Earth after prolonged periods in microgravity or zero gravity. They found eye abnormalities similar to those seen in cases of intracranial hypertension.
Will the findings affect how we plan for space travel? Read the story by clicking here, or visit our MRI Digital Community at mri.auntminnie.com.
One week left for SalaryScan survey
Finally, if you haven't filled out our SalaryScan survey, you've got just a few days left. We'll be closing the survey to data collection by the end of the week, so make sure you go to salaryscan.auntminnie.com to participate. Everyone who completes the survey and provides contact information will be entered for a chance to win a Kindle e-reader, including one of a pair of hot new Kindle Fires!
