By Judy Peterson
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, bringing out pink ribbons, but more importantly drawing attention to the disease that more than 1,000 Santa Clara County women are expected to be diagnosed with this year.
Early detection is key to survival, and now there is a new technology available locally that is being used to augment mammograms in high-risk patients.
El Camino Hospital brought a 3T MRI online at its Mountain View campus a few weeks ago. “It’s an incredibly sensitive machine,” Dr. Jessie Jacob said. Jacob is the director of El Camino’s breast imaging and intervention program. “The novelty is the strength of the magnet. When you do MRI, you’re using a magnetic field and radio waves, and that generates a picture. The 3T MRI is more sensitive and accurate because the picture is clearer.”
A study performed at the University of Toledo shows that the 3T MRI detected 66 out of 66 malignant breast lesions in high-risk patients, while mammography detected 54 of 66. Read more…
