Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Mammography is probably one of the least popular imaging disciplines among radiologists, so it's a little surprising that another medical specialty might be interested in taking over some of the business.
But that's the case this week in our Women's Imaging Digital Community, where we're featuring a study by South African researchers who say that breast surgeons could be trained to be an alternative to mammography specialists. The researchers assessed the diagnostic accuracy of breast surgeons for reading screening mammograms and found that their cancer diagnosis rate compared favorably to that of radiologists as published in the literature.
One thing they didn't measure was breast surgeons' tolerance for low reimbursement and high malpractice exposure. Learn more by clicking here.
Whole-body breast MRI
In other news, we're wrapping up our coverage of last week's American Roentgen Ray Society meeting with an article on research from a group in India that found whole-body MRI to be a useful tool in working up breast cancer patients.
The researchers used a whole-body scanner to evaluate patients for metastasis and then followed them for more than a year. Not only did MRI change patient management in nearly half of the cases, it found some cancers that had spread before symptoms occurred. Get the rest of the details by clicking here.
CR mammographyFinally, the last story we're highlighting concerns digital mammography with a computed radiography (CR)-based technology rather than flat-panel digital systems. CR mammography is usually thought of as an interim step in going digital, but Finnish researchers found that it compares favorably to analog film-screen mammography. Find out why by clicking here.
Get these stories and more in the Women's Imaging Digital Community at women.auntminnie.com.
