Thermography or Mammography? The FDA Says the Latter

It sounded almost too good to be true: instead of going for an often painful mammogram, why not try thermography, a technique that scans the breast for areas that are warmer than others, often indicating cancer, instead?

But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reported that mammography is still the most effective way of detecting breast cancer in its earliest, most treatable stages, according to a story written by staff writers at medimagingnet.com.

The FDA has warned healthcare providers and a thermography manufacturer that thermography cannot replace mammograms in screening for cancer, according to the story.Websites have been shouting out thermography instead of mammography claiming, falsely as it turns out, that thermography can find breast cancer years before it would be detected by mammography. A physicians’ group, Johnson Medical Associates, reported that a four-year clinical trial published in 2010 of 769 women on whom researchers used thermography after they had just gotten suspicious mammogram results, found only 3 percent were falsely told they were cancer-free.

“This is much better than the 10- to 30-percent rate for mammograms. The researchers concluded that infrared imaging would be a valuable adjunct to mammography in assessing the likelihood of cancer,” said the physicians’ group’s website.

However, according to the medimagingnet.com story, the FDA has no evidence to support these claims about thermography.

Mammograms do have some limitations. For younger women, with denser breasts, it can often be harder to spot abnormalities, according to breasthealthblog.com.

But the general consensus is that mammography is the best way to detect breast cancer. “Mammography is still the most effective screening method for detecting breast cancer in its early, most treatable stages,” Helen Barr, M.D., director of the Division of Mammography Quality and Radiation Programs in the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, was quoted as saying in the medimagingnet.com story. “Women should not rely solely on thermography for the screening or diagnosis of breast cancer. While there is plenty of evidence that mammography is effective in breast cancer detection, there is simply no evidence that thermography can take its place.”

As someone who wouldn’t be here were it not for mammography, women, make sure you go for one every year (don’t listen to the people who say every two or three years). If I’d listened to that advice, my 10-year-old son would now be living in a single-parent family.