This media piece talks about an important technology. The good news is that Contrast Enhanced Mammography (CEM) is not just in Australia – it is in Canada too.
What does it involve:
Before a regular mammogram, a woman is given an injection of contrast dye- iodine- and then a couple minutes later she has her regular mammogram. The beauty is the way cancer lights up. CEM can pick up 10+ additional cancers per thousand women that were missed on regular mammogram. The number is very close -just slightly below -what MRI picks up. It can be a game changer for women with dense breasts.
While CEM is available in over 30 facilities in Ontario and various provinces are using it- it is not used for screening yet, but rather as a diagnostic tool when a woman has an abnormality. It is also used for women with dense breasts and breast cancer. It can ease MRI capacity issues and be used for women who have issues with MRI. We hope to see CEM used more and more for women with dense breasts and one way that can happen is if women begin to ask for it and even demand it. We have the technology that can find more breast cancers and find them earlier. We have to use it.
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Concerns with the 2024 breast screening guidelines and the guideline creation process.
Source: Dense Breasts Canada