Any one know of other alternatives to a biopsy for possibly having breast cancer?
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at
1:39 am
lorettalynn8762 asked:
My aunt has recently found a lump in her breast, and she went to her doctor and they said that she needs to do a biopsy immediately! My aunt doesnt like to go to doctors for anything at all, let alone this. Well, she heard of “another” way of finding out what it is without doing the biopsy. Has anyone heard of “another” way of finding out, and is it truthful? We all feel that the “other doctor” is just trying to take her money! Please help as her appt is tomorrow for this “other way”! Thank you so much.
My aunt has recently found a lump in her breast, and she went to her doctor and they said that she needs to do a biopsy immediately! My aunt doesnt like to go to doctors for anything at all, let alone this. Well, she heard of “another” way of finding out what it is without doing the biopsy. Has anyone heard of “another” way of finding out, and is it truthful? We all feel that the “other doctor” is just trying to take her money! Please help as her appt is tomorrow for this “other way”! Thank you so much.
Tagged with: Appt • Biopsy • Money
Filed under: Breast Cancer
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A mammogram – but after that they do a biopsy. A biopsy is the only way to look at the tissue and find out what the lump is.
Look, it is unpleasant to have any intervention done, but doctors do biopsies because the bit of tissue they remove can be cut into sections and viewed with a microscope. This means they can see what sort of cells are in the lump. And whether they are dividing – slowly, rapidly or very rapidly. Cancer is the uncontrolled division of mutated cells, so a shadow picture from a mammogram is a very second rate diagnostic.
This decision could quite literally be a life and death one. If she has a rapidly dividing tumour, she needs radical treatment now to save her life. If it is a cyst, she does not. Naturally anything in between has different consequences.
Please persuade her to get the right treatment as soon as possible.
has she had mammograms yet? if not, she needs that first. often, “lumps” are nothing more than normal but lumpy tissue. there is a procedure called ductal lavage, where saline is injected into the nipple and the fluid is recollected from the nipple, and sometimes a diagnosis can be made by studying the cells in that fluid. it’s relatively new and not likely as good as a regular biopsy where a needle is placed into the breast and actually tissue fragments are obtained. also, mri of the breast is a really sensitive test—it is able to detect almost all breast cancers. the problem is that benign or noncancerous things can look just like breast cancer on mri, so often if something is seen on breast mri, the patient ends up getting a biopsy anyway.