Dear Women's Imaging Insider,
Welcome to your very last Insider for 2012. It's certainly been an interesting year, and there are plenty of stories in the Women's Imaging Digital Community for you to peruse.
First up, mammography screening in Germany is a relatively new phenomenon. It started in 2005, but there haven't been any studies measuring the program's effectiveness -- until now. As a marker of how well the program is doing, researchers identified the number of interval cancers appearing in women in Germany's largest state. Find out how well Germany stacks up against other European screening programs.
The year wouldn't be complete if there weren't some controversy about mammography. In the perennial argument about whether mammography does more harm than good, some researchers have resorted to guesswork, according to an opinion piece by Dr. Peter B. Dean and Dr. László Tabár. There have been misleading conclusions and misinformation, they write. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
Also in your Women's Imaging Digital community, you'll find a roundup of stories from RSNA 2012:
German researchers found patients can be saved from radiation by using contrast-enhanced digital mammography, which improves sensitivity without decreasing specificity. Find out more.
Willi Kalender, PhD, and Dr. Christiane Kuhl have put aside their differences to work on potentially groundbreaking research. Kalender has developed a new breast CT system that he thinks will offer a significantly more accurate diagnosis of breast cancer for women with dense breasts through high-contrast, 3D images. An examination on the scanner will involve no more radiation exposure than standard screening mammograms.
Other stories include research from Korea on the use of routine follow-up ultrasound for early detection of nonpalpable locoregional recurrent cancer. Although locoregional recurrence occurs infrequently after mastectomy, ultrasound detects nonpalpable cancer before a clinical exam. Read what the authors have to say. That's just the beginning. Be sure to check out the Women's Imaging Digital Community for even more news.
You'll see us at the European Congress of Radiology in March, but in the meantime, feel free to send me an email about whatever's on your mind in regard to women's imaging.
Happy holidays to you and yours.
