Healthy Skepticism Library item: 4920

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Unproven breast cancer screening test may steer women away from mammograms
CBC News Online 2006 May 23
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2006/05/23/breast-thermography.html

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:

Thermal mammography has no diagnostic merit, is an expensive waste of money, is likely to cause unnecessary alarm through misleading false positive diagnoses and undesirable complacency through misleading false negative diagnoses.

It is a mischievous and dangerous rip-off and it is astonishing that such things are not illegal in Canada.

Full text:

Unproven breast cancer screening test may steer women away from mammograms
Last Updated Tue, 23 May 2006 13:09:13 EDT
CBC News
Women are paying more than $200 for a temperature-based alternative to mammogram screening, but critics call it bad science that could give false results.

Thermogram screen: exposing areas of the body that are warmer than others can lead to the early diagnosis of cancer, advocates say. (CBC)

INDEPTH: Cancer screening

Women over 50 are told to get regular mammograms to detect breast cancer, but many find the procedure uncomfortable or worry about their exposure to radiation.

Thermography exposes areas in the body that are warmer than others, which advocates say gives an early warning signal for breast cancer.

The thinking is that warming indicates increased blood circulation, which feeds tumours, advocates say.

Some women find thermography more comfortable than a mammogram. The worst part is plunging the hands into ice-cold water before standing in front of an infrared camera.

Breast thermography is 88 per cent effective in finding circulation problems, although it doesn’t diagnose breast cancer, per se, said Verna Hunt, a naturopathic doctor.

“It is a diagnostic tool,” said Hunt, of Medical Thermography International, a company that arranges thermography clinics across Canada. “But it can’t say, ‘you have breast cancer, you don’t.’”

Since being diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago, Wendy Oakes has been receiving thermography scans instead of mammograms, against the advice of her surgeon.

“I believe in this test,” said Oakes. “If something’s going to show up, it’s going to show up very early.”

Cancer patient Wendy Oakes has been receiving thermography screens for the past five years. (CBC)
There is no scientific evidence that warmer tissue indicates pre-cancerous cells, or that increased blood circulation causes cancer.

“If they’re choosing thermography over mammography thinking they’re equivalent, then they are actually being terribly misled,” said Dr. Verna Mai, who heads screening programs for Cancer Care Ontario.

Hunt said if a thermography scan indicates hot areas, she treats it with herbs and botanical medicine so it doesn’t develop into a tumour.

There’s no “good, sound evidence” that the remedies actually prevent breast cancer, Mai countered.

Health Canada regulates the promotion of drugs and treatments but not of screening tests, making thermography a case of “buyer beware,” Mai said.