New technology ‘transformative’ in diagnosing cancer

BREAST cancer touches almost every family in some way. It’s the most common cancer among women in the UK, and although survival rates have improved over recent decades, too many cases are still picked up too late.

- Arnab Basu

For women with dense breast tissue, around four in 10 women, the challenge is even greater.

Mammograms, the standard screening tool, often don’t pick up cancers in dense tissue.

‘The result is that cancers can be hidden, with diagnosis coming later when treatment’s harder and outcomes poorer.

‘The preliminary results of the Braid trial, recently published by Oxford University, underline just how pressing this issue is.

‘The study focused on women with dense breast tissue whose mammograms had shown no signs of cancer.

It found that adding other types of screening made a real difference, picking up more cancers, which would otherwise have been missed altogether, as well as finding them earlier when the tumours are smaller and easier to treat.

In the trial, techniques such as MRI and contrast enhanced mammography showed promise.

But they also have drawbacks. MRI scans are time-consuming, too expensive to be offered to large numbers of women and not universally suitable.