Breast cancer: The importance of early detection

Time and again, healthcare providers emphasize the importance of detecting breast cancer at the earliest stage of the condition. Often the disease is detected after symptoms appear, while many women with breast cancer actually have no symptoms. This makes regular screening so important.

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There are several risk factors for breast cancer, regardless if many cases cannot be pinned down to a specific cause. A woman’s risk increases with age, as almost 80 percent of breast cancers are found in women age 50 and above. There’s also personal history, family history, and genetic factors to consider. Childbearing can also be a risk factor – the older a woman is when she has her first child, the greater her risk. 

These risk factors highlight the fact that early detection can go a long way in saving lives. Current recommended screening guidelines promote mammography, a breast X-ray that can detect breast cancer up to two years before the tumor can be felt by the patient or the doctor. Women ages 40 to 45 or older and are at average breast cancer risk are recommended to have a mammogram once every year. 

Regular breast self-exam is another option for early detection. This is recommended to be done at least once a month, as 40 percent of diagnosed cases are actually detected by women who feel a lump. It also helps one become familiar with how her breasts look and feel, making it easier to detect abnormalities. 

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Matias Campiani is the co-founder and CEO of Welwaze Medical, Inc., a health tech company dedicated to the development of application-centric software solutions tied to sensors that allow users to monitor their health. The first application is focusing on a revolutionary new product that allows early breast cancer detection. Learn more on this page.

How High-Tech Tech Tools Improve Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Abu Qader, a Cornell University freshman, once had a family trip to Afghanistan and saw that the country’s medical care needs attention. He knew and saw people and relatives there fall ill with breast cancer, left undetected and putting their lives in danger. The medical technology company he co-founded now seeks to address gaps in breast cancer treatment through technology.

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Many high-tech companies are now vying for attention and pouring investments in this space of medical diagnostics. Mammograms remain the most important diagnostic tool for breast cancer, where suspicious lesions will be tested with a needle biopsy. If the biopsy detects an abnormality, the patient will undergo surgery to remove the lesion. About 90 percent of the time, however, the lesions are found to be benign, rendering the procedure unnecessary.

This is where high-tech diagnostic tools, such as AI based ones, come in and help prevent overscreening and subsequent overtreatment. Machine learning models, for instance, are trained on existing high-risk lesions, considering variables as broad as demographics and family history. They are hoped to correctly predict breast cancer with greater accuracy than most traditional methods.

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Callbacks for false positives are said to have been reduced in recent years, thanks to new technology that incorporate 3D data, facilitating the detection of the difference between, say, a breast mass and an overlap of normal tissue. These forms of screening are usually performed in conjunction with conventional mammograms to improve accuracy and reliability of diagnosis.

Matias Campiani is the CEO of Welzwaze, a tech company he co-founded that focuses on the development of AI-based diagnostic and health monitoring solutions, with an emphasis on early breast cancer detection. Learn more about this technology on this page.