The article begins by saying “breast cancer can be cured if found early.” This is so aggravating: Why not work towards healthy breasts so you don’t get breast cancer in the first place? Misinformation about thermography like this comes up regularly.
“Thermography is widely used in today’s clinical practice for measuring and recording the heat produced by different parts of the body or mammary gland. The heat radiates from the body varies in different parts according to the flow of blood through the vessels; thus areas of poor circulation produce less heat. On the other hand, a tumor with an abnormally increased blood supply may be recorded as a ‘hot spot.’ Yet the technique’s diagnostic accuracy is not as high as mammography and ultrasound examination.”
The only “tool” that can positively identify cancer is a biopsy. In the early 1990s, thermography was used in an attempt to distinguish between a cancerous and non-cancerous nodule. The accuracy was 80-90% but the conclusion was that thermography had “failed” the test to identify cancer.
Thermography can locate areas of concern in the breast by identifying a ‘hot spot.’ It could be an infection, mastitis, an inflamed cyst….or early cancer. Changes in the tissue begin long before there are enough changes–enough abnormal cells–to be detected by a mammogram.
Mammograms find cancer early; thermograms identify areas that need attention to heal.
