Breast screening

Breast screening involves the regular examination of a woman’s breasts to determine whether anything has changed. Because screening happens at regular intervals, if cancer develops it is likely to be detected at a very early stage when it will be most responsive to treatment. The small changes in the breast which regular screening detects may be too small to be felt by the woman herself or by her doctor.

Screening is traditionally done using mammography – a low-dose x-ray examination of the breast.

Mammography is recommended for women aged 50 or older and is available every three years as part of routine NHS screening. However, it is less sensitive in younger women who have much denser breast tissue which makes changes much more difficult to detect. Some women also find mammography uncomfortable.

BHUK provides both mammography and Digitial Infrared BreastScan (DIB), which is a safe, comfortable and non-invasive screening technology.

DIB uses a special camera that picks up ‘hot spots’ that may be caused by increased blood flow to cancerous tissue, and has the potential to detect tumours at an early stage. The technique is particularly suitable for women under 50, does not involve radiation and complements other screening technologies.

DIB is available in the UK exclusively from BreastHealth UK.

Note: Validation includes a recent study at the Department of Surgery, New York Presbyterian Hospital, in Cornell, New York, which showed that DIB could be a useful tool in early diagnosis of breast cancer, particularly in younger women for whom mammography may be unsuitable.

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