Patients cite "convenience to home or work" as the main reason they changed mammography facilities, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center and The Barrett Center in Cincinnati, OH.

The simple application of a pain-relieving gel may reduce the breast discomfort some women experience during mammography exams, according to the results of a clinical trial published in the online edition of Radiology.

Some characteristics of mammography facilities are associated with the accuracy of interpretation of screening mammograms, according to a study published online June 10 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Adding a screening ultrasound examination to routine mammography reveals more breast cancers than mammography alone, according to results of a major new clinical trial. The trial, however, also found that adding an ultrasound exam also increases the rate of false positive findings and unnecessary biopsies.

Radiologists can, with confidence, recommend a six-month follow-up diagnostic mammogram rather than an immediate biopsy for patients with “probably benign” breast lesions, a new study emphasizes.

In the first study to assess mammography in women 80 and older, researchers found that having regular mammograms significantly decreases the risk of being diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer, but only about one-fifth of women in this age group receive them regularly.

According to researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, mammography, the gold-standard for breast cancer screening and early detection, has shown to significantly reduce the risk of being diagnosed with advanced stage breast cancer in women over the age of 80, an age group currently without clear guidelines recommending regular screenings.

An annual report from the American Cancer Society highlights that long-term favorable trends have stalled for several factors that have been responsible for declining cancer death rates in the U.S. The report, Cancer Prevention & Early Detection Facts and Figures 2008 (CPED), points out that drops in smoking appear to have leveled off and that mammography rates have been stable or slightly declining since 2000 after increasing for more than a decade.

Researchers, who are in the process of developing a blood test that may diagnose breast cancer up to four years earlier than a mammogram, need the help of thousands of people living in the East Midlands.

For some women, digital mammography may be a better screening option than film mammography, according to newly published results from the Digital Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial (DMIST). The results appear in the February issue of Radiology.

A cost-effectiveness study of the value of digital mammography breast cancer screening has found that digital mammography screening does not result in sufficient health gains to warrant its increased cost unless its use is limited to younger women or to women with dense breasts (Article, p. 1).

Cone-beam breast CT provides exceptional tissue contrast and can potentially reduce examination time with comparable radiation dose to conventional 2D mammography, according to a new study by a team of researchers from the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.