Quality ongoing education is needed to support early detection of breast cancer
Patrick Brennan, PhD
Scientist and entrepreneur aiming to transform disease detection through novel education, research and technologies.
I wanted to draw attention again to the important issue of early breast cancer detection.
In 2020, there were 2.3 million women diagnosed with breast cancer and 684,996 deaths globally. *
This means that at the end of 2020, there were 7.8 million women alive who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the past 5 years, making it the world’s most prevalent cancer.
As we know, breast cancer treatment can be highly effective, with patients achieving survival probabilities of 90% or higher. The critical factor in achieving this is identifying the cancer early.
According to the World Health Organisation if an annual mortality reduction of just 2.5% per year occurs worldwide, 2.5 million breast cancer deaths would be avoided between 2020 and 2040.
The fact is that a woman dies from breast cancer every thirteen minutes*
So, knowing that early diagnosis is critical to effective treatment, what can be done to support and enhance early detection, particularly in parts of the world where that is not happening?
Our research shows that a radiologist involved in breast cancer screening in the westernised world will typically only see 1 breast cancer in every 200 cases!
This does not help radiologists see the range of cancers they need to see to optimise detection and currently:
1. Breast cancers can be missed in 30% of all women
2. 9 out of 10 women recalled for breast cancer diagnosis DO NOT have cancer
These results have clear impacts on patient outcomes, confidence levels and costs and every radiologist who reads breast cases must want to help lower the death rate and reduce the breast cancer burden on society globally.
Better and more focussed education will help radiologists detect breast cancer earlier.
Over the last 12 years, we have proven that we can improve a radiologist’s ability to detect cancers by 34% and I would love to show every radiologist on the planet how they could benefit.
(*Sources: World Health Organisation, National Breast Cancer Council) breast cancer cases.
💥𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆 𝑨𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒂𝒕𝒐𝒓 | 𝘜𝘯𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘖𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 ... q𝘶𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘭𝘺. Accredited LEGO® Serious Play® Method Facilitator
5moPatrick, thanks for sharing with your network.
Scientist and entrepreneur aiming to transform disease detection through novel education, research and technologies.
2yRobert Smith
NAATI Certified Interpreter & Translator (Arabic <=> English) Freelance
2yGreat share. Wonder if a combo of mammogram & breast U/S or CT scan, is sufficient to categorically confirm the result. Would there be a need for other diagnostic imaging should the result be negative?
Chief Scientific Officer │ BCAL Diagnostics
2yGreat article Patrick Brennan, PhD early detection is key. Given the cancer screening cancellations and delays due to COVID19, cancer is expected to become the next pandemic sadly with so many years of life lost due to delays in detecting cancers when they could have been treated rather than becoming a life-sentence!