Is a Gammagram in Your Future?

One in every 30 women in the U.S will die of breast cancer. The reason is often because it is not detected early enough for treatment. Traditional mammograms don't always detect cancer, and some are simply inconclusive. If a woman has breast implants, scar tissue, or simply dense or fibrous breast tissue, a mammogram can be difficult to read, and radiologists can miss things. A relatively new technology, Breast Specific Gamma Imaging (BSGI), generally referred to as "gammagrams" by radiologists, gynecologists, and oncologists, can be used in these cases, and it saves lives.

BSGI works by taking images of the breast tissue's metabolic activity with a small amount of a radioactive tracer. Traditional mammograms, as well as MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) show pictures of breast density rather than metabolism. Cancer cells have higher metabolic rates than other cells, so they absorb significantly more of the tracer and show up as "hot spots" on the imaging.

Medcenter One in Bismarck is one of 50 sites in the nation that offers BSGI testing as of this writing, and the only site in North Dakota to offer it. Dr. Ted Fogarty, a radiologist at Medcenter One's Q&R clinic, says that gammagrams are so efficient that in the first year of use, doctors at Medcenter have diagnosed breast cancer at a rate that is three times the national rate for a similar practice using only mammogram screening. Gammagrams can find cancers as small as 3 mm, before they can be detected either by self-exams or by mammograms in dense breast tissue.