Could ductal lavage or other methods of screening eventually replace the mammogram?
Hard to say. My fantasy is that in a couple of years the ductal lavage will be routine. You go in, get your Pap smear and get your ducts checked. So instead of diagnosing people who have cancer, we’ll be diagnosing people who have pre-pre-cancers, and we’ll reverse it very much in the way we reverse cervical cancer. If that’s the case, then mammography will be less important as a screening test, but it will still have some importance. If you found malignant cells, it will be very nice to know where they’re coming from and deal with that. Mammography may have a role in that. Q: A recent Canadian study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded that a breast exam by a qualified physician is as effective at keeping a woman over 50 alive as a mammogram. Your thoughts? A: There are a couple of caveats to that study. The mammograms have been criticized as not being of very good quality. Maybe it’s that a good breast physical exam is the same as a bad mammogram. These
