Proof that Thermography does not diagnose Breast Cancer

"A Current Affair"? Seriously?

"Like its main rival broadcast on the Seven Network, Today Tonight, A Current Affair is often considered by media critics and the public at large to use sensationalist journalism – as depicted in the parody television show Frontline – and to deliberately present advertising as editorial content".

You can google for the no less than 50 law suits for inaccurate reporting, defamation, fabricated and falsified reports. It's the television equivelant of News of the World or the National Enquirer....."Woman gives birth to martian", or getting your medical news from Brian Williams (sorry couldn't resist mentioning him, 'cos it's about the funniest thing ever!)

Nuh-uh. You tell your story to A Current Affair, you lose all credibility. There must be a reason she chose that venue to tell her story, true or not.

I thought it was fairly well established that thermography can only pick up things close to the "surface," i.e. right under the skin. That would logically mean that it would be bad at detecting something like breast cancer, unless someone had Keira Knightley boobage. That is presumably also why the clinic only calls it a wellness check, because legally they can't claim that it has any diagnostic value.

Leggo, lol! No, you will not be seeing this bald, fat (gotta love steroids and chemo), scarred up body on any TV program. I really wanted thermography to work, but it did not. It would be so nice to have something that wasn't as invasive to the body. I'm leaning to trying to do ultrasound follow-ups, but I suspect my MO will want more than that.

Momine, I believe my growth was closer to the surface of my skin, and even though the facility had done an ultrasound and knew it was there, when they did the thermography, nothing.

They apologized and said they messed up the thermography and offered to re-do it free of charge. But by the time they told me, weeks later, I had already sucked it up and done a diagnostic mammogram (which I did not want to do) and an ultrasound and was scheduled for surgery. They said it had something to do with the air flow in the room causing improper results. I found out three weeks after the test was done, and it was done by what I thought was a fairly reputable integrative clinic in Irvine, Ca. They are recommended on the Chris beat cancer website and do both alternative and traditional treatments which is why I went to them because I wanted to know both options, traditional and alternative.

Trust me, if something alternative works, I am so there. I went to the traditional approach because of the sloppiness of their approach, plus the time it took me to get any results from them. I was terrified and didn't want to take a risk with the cancer spreading and risking my life. They also did an ultrasound which came back with a Bi-Rads rating of 0 because they said without a mammogram they couldn't tell me anything. They never told me that at the time and cost me a month of waiting to get appropriate treatment.

I so want to believe in alternative approaches, but I haven't found any alternative center (have been to several) that don't embrace the approach of well let's try this approach and see if it works. How will I know if it works

suzie, my point being mammo is not fool proof but you don't see people make a big deal out of it. everything about alt is being scrutinized and magnified.

personally i know two ppl died because conventional didn't work. did ppl blame chemo?? hello no. that's my point.

June, you absolutely do see people making a big deal about the limitations of mammograms. You see it all over the media and all over these boards. I, for one, was absolutely shocked when the radiologist (in an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center) not only showed me the tumor as it appeared in my mammo, but then walked me back through the "normal" scans from the two previous years, where the tumor was visible, but only because its location was now known. True, the "noise" out there is 99% about the benefits and importance of screening, so perhaps the negatives are hugely overpowered, but they are definitely there. Before my personal experience I assumed a near 100% accuracy in my imaging. Now I make a mental note every time I hear about either the limitations of mammo, or the advantages of, for instance, the new 3-D imaging, and I hope others do as well.

One point I think important is that the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional is known, because of huge amounts of available data. This is simply not yet true about, for instance, thermography. The woman in the video assumed (as I did with those early mammos) that an all-clear was an all-clear. I am sure she had read and signed a disclosure indicating that her thermogram could not be considered a diagnostic tool, and had probably listened to a verbal caution to that effect, but the power of the picture enormously overshadowed those caveats, as it probably would for any of us.

I'm not being negative about thermography, just positive about investigating its limitations as well as its advantages, and doing a mental side-by-side with traditional imaging, and then with actual images. If your personal tumor reveals itself in both, all to the good. If it appears in one but not the other, well, more investigation is called for. Conventional or alt, it seems to me that, regardless of diagnosis or the approach, the basis of treatment is an accurate diagnoses, followed by accurate tracking of the disease process or its reversal.

Because of my experience, I'm pretty negative about the current guidelines' advice that older women can have mammos every two years. I am very glad I did not skip my 2012 imaging!

Mammograms are not foolproof and, I believe, that that fact has been well-established. That's why mammogram-ultrasound-biopsy are used together to diagnose breast cancer. A mammogram tells you if something is there, an ultrasound tells you whether that something is solid or fluid, and a biopsy tells you what it is. As brookside pointed out above, there has been much discussion- and analysis on these boards as to the efficacy of screening/diagnostic mammograms and most of us - myself included - believe that they remain the best screening tool so far.

That said, my screening mammograms were all negative leading up to my finding a lump; the last "all clear" I got was a mere five months prior. My diagnostic mammogram was inconclusive because of dense breast tissue. But the addition of an ultrasound and biopsy provided a clear diagnosis of IDC. So, screening mammograms alone failed me, but I'm not going to through screening mammograms under the bus, because there was a clear reason (dense breast tissue) why - in my situation - it was more complicated and I realize that.

I, also, feel strongly that alternative methods need to be held up to the same scientific scrutiny as conventional. We need to know what works and what doesn't in both approaches. We need to know if combining certain conventional approaches with alternative ones (or vice versa) provides better outcomes. If thermography doesn't work as well as mammography for detecting breast cancer, we need to know that. That doesn't mean that mammography is fool-proof (far from it!), only that it is better than thermography.

Kayb, I didn't see if they were able to exclude DCIS diagnoses from the meta-analysis. Did you? Thermography openly states it may fail with a non-vascularized tumor. I am using it to monitor myself for neovascularizations, not necessarily tumors, and at least my MO backed my up on that logic.

To clarify kayb, I meant I didn't have a mammogram with my Stage 3 diagnosis. Wasn't ordered in my case, so I didn't have to play that mind game with myself. I really should update my profile so people know what I'm talking about. Sorry for the confusion.

Kayb, I think the key is if the vascularity changes over time. It would be good to know how many of the women with false positives had baselines.