Mammography-special x-ray study breast cancer- cyst, lump

Mammography-special x-ray study -is usually reserved for special situations. Mammography is often more accurate than physical examination but less accurate than biopsy. A skilled radiologist is needed to read these x-rays. 

Newer radiological techniques promise to make the x-rays easier to read and may help to make the test more feasible for screening purposes. Mammography often helps in cases where the physician feels that the lump is not cancerous but would like additional supportive evidence. It is also employed when many cysts are present in a breast, making it difficult to detect a new mass. Mammography often is helpful when a lump is difficult to feel and outline clearly, or when there is persistent pain in one breast.

It is often used routinely for women who have a strong family history of breast cancer or who have had a cancer removed from one breast, since they may have a higher-than- average risk of developing breast cancer. Many women between the ages of 30 and 50 have benign cystic disease of the breast. The condition is characterized by dilatation and cyst formation in the glandular tissue, perhaps connected with estrogen secretion. 

There does not seem to be any relationship between cystic disease and cancer development, but many physicians will not prescribe estrogen-containing medications (such as birth control pills) for women with cystic disease, because there is a tendency with such medications for the cysts to become larger and more numerous, making cancer more difficult to detect. The most common lump in the breast of a woman less than age 30 is a fibro adenoma. This is usually an isolated and well-demarcated lump. It may grow to large size and cause pain.

Treatment is removal of the mass to make certain that it is not cancerous. Early detection and prompt treatment are vital for winning out over cancer of the breast. If the cancer is removed before it has spread to local lymph tissue, the five-year cure rate is 75 to 90 percent; e.g., 75 to 90 percent of patients are alive and well at the end of five years.

 If removed after such spread, the cure rate is in the 50 percent range. At present, the recommended treatment is radical mastectomy-removal of all breast tissue and adjacent lymph nodes. Most women withstand the surgery well. 

Smoking life problems, ageing, breathing problems, cancer, lung cancer etc

By 1967, there was evidence that, including women, there were on any average day 800 deaths in the United States attributable to cigarette smoking: 175 due to cancer, 375 to diseases of heart and circulatory system, 250 to chronic bronchitis, emphysema, peptic ulcers, and other diseases. Cigarette smoking is the major villain, but studies do show some relationship of cigar and pipe smoking to coronary heart disease and circulatory system disease, and to cancers of mouth, pharynx, and larynx. 

The non inhaling mouth smoker, which is what the usual cigar and pipe smoker tends to be, must realize that there is still 25 to 50 percent absorption of nicotine from the mouth (compared to 90 percent from the lungs when smoke is inhaled) and for the heavy mouth smoker this can be a real hazard. But the overall death rate is much less influenced by cigar and pipe smoking. For example, for men smoking only cigars the death rate is 22 percent higher than for nonsmokers between ages 45 and 64, and 5 percent higher after 65. For pipe smokers, it is 11 percent higher than for nonsmokers between 45 and 64, 2 percent higher after 65.

  

THE HARMFUL SUBSTANCES

Tobacco smoke is made up of gases, vapors, and chemical compounds with the proportions varying depending upon the type of tobacco, how it is smoked, and the burning temperature. While a cigarette is being puffed, the burning zone temperature reaches about 1580°F (water boils at 212°F). One of the potentially harmful gases in cigarette smoke is a powerful poison, hydrogen cyanide. Another is carbon monoxide, which is present in a concentration 400 times greater than what is considered a safe level in industry. Carbon monoxide combines with hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying substance in red blood cells.

Studies indicate that as much as 6 percent of the hemoglobin in the blood of an average smoker is taken up and inactivated by carbon monoxide; in a heavy smoker, 8 percent. Taking the place of oxygen, carbon monoxide leads to shortness of breath on exertion. 

Smoking problems and healthcare

No HEALTH problem in our time has commanded more attention than smoking. The issuance of the official Surgeon General's Report in 1964 constituted a major scientific and medical event and began a public and medical concern that continues. Despite the concern, however, one third of the women and half the men in the United States still smoke cigarettes. 

Deaths from diseases associated with cigarette smoking continue. A large proportion of health resources and money must be devoted to trying to treat such diseases. But there are encouraging events. As many as 1.5 million people a year recently have been abandoning smoking.

Among them, fortunately, are young and middle-aged men who are at particularly high risk of premature death from lung cancer and coronary heart disease. Also hopeful is evidence from a Public 

Health Service survey indicating that while 29 percent of boys and 15 percent of girls at age 17 are regular smokers, this represents a significant reduction in the proportion of young people taking up smoking. And school systems across the country are emphasizing educational programs on smoking and health in the hope of creating a "smokeless generation."

The evidence about the dangers of cigarette smoking to health is now overwhelming. In the words of the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service, smoking "is the greatest preventable cause of illness, disability and premature death in this country."

 A conviction shared by medical and health agencies has been expressed by the New York State Commission of Health: "No other single factor kills so many Americans as cigarette smoking .... Bullets, germs and viruses are killers; but for Americans, cigarettes are more deadly than any of them. No single known lethal agent is as deadly as the cigarette." Smoking is a certain irony in the history of tobacco use. American Indians, early explorers discovered, smoked tobacco in pipes for ceremonial silicoses, and believed it had some medicinal values. 

How Supplementary Tests are useful along with Blood tests to determine and eradicate diseases?

A chest x-ray to disclose abnormality of the lungs is commonly made. X-ray studies are also used, when considered necessary, to check on heart size and, with the help of barium' either taken by mouth or given by enema, to study the upper and lower gastrointestinal tract. In addition, with the aid of injections of special dyes, x-rays today can be used to study the chambers within the heart and the condition of blood vessels. There is a method of using x-ray, after injection of a dye into an artery leading to the brain, to detect a brain tumor; this technique shows the blood vessel architecture of the brain and where tumor growth has pushed one or more vessels out of normal position. Blood studies have many values.

For a blood count, blood is drawn from a vein in the arm or fingertip, mixed with a diluting fluid, placed in a glass chamber so the number of red and white blood cells can be counted. Red pigment (hemoglobin) in the blood can be determined by comparison with color standards. The proportion of red cells in relation to the rest of the blood can be established by whirling the blood in a centrifuge so that heavier red cells settle in the bottom of a small measured tube called a hematocrit.

 Any departures from normal-such as too little hemoglobin indicative of anemia, too few white cells indicative of inability to combat infection, too many white cells indicative of body response to an infection not otherwise apparent-can are noted quickly.

Blood, usually taken from a vein in small amounts, also may be checked for sugar content as a test for diabetes and for the level of a substance, uric acid, as a test for gout. And sophisticated new blood tests often are valuable for heart problems, supplementing the information provided by the electrocardiogram. The electrocardiogram, a record of the electrical activity of the heart, is useful for analyzing any disturbances of heartrhythm, detecting inflammation, showing damage to the heart muscle, and making other determinations. An electrocardiogram, taken in good health, is of value because it provides a baseline for the future; it establishes what is normal for the individual and allows better interpretation of any changes that occur later. When a heart attack occurs-and many heart attacks are silent-an electrocardiogram will show that it has occurred. But it may not show accurately how much of the heart has been damaged. 

CALCULATING RISKS and nature care on Our body care, diseases and conditions-1000 posts following

CALCULATING RISKS of Diseases and conditions

First, it became evident not only that people vary in susceptibility to disease but that increased risk depends upon many factors and that it is possible to calculate risks. Breast cancer, for example, occurs in 5 percent of white women over black in the United States-and so, on the average, there is a 1 in 20 But a woman with a positive family history of breast cancer-one mother or sister or aunt developed the disease-has triple the risk on her women. (Let us say, at once, that if this increased hazard be- of hereditary influences stood by itself it' would be only a more But it stands with increasingly sensitive and detecting her at earlier and earlier-and therefore more curable-stages, and scores the wisdom of special emphasis on breast cancer detection such a woman.
Other factors, racial and social, help to identify special proneness’s. Japanese have a high risk of stomach cancer but relatively low risk breast cancer; the Chinese and Malaysians have a high risk of nose throat cancer. In unskilled American workers and their wives, the incidence of cancer of the stomach and uterine cervix is three to four times higher than among people in the professional fields. On the other hand cancer of the breast and leukemia are substantially more common in the higher economic classes. there are occupational factors to be considered.

For example, urinary bladder cancer has an increased incidence among dye workers, in that industry programs have annual tests of urine. Medicine also has been establishing other characteristics associated with high risk of specific diseases as a means of permitting preventive medical care to be used. For coronary heart disease, which may lead to the heart attack, the characteristics include excessive levels of certain fats II the blood, high blood pressure, high pulse rate, cigarette smoking, physlcal inactivity, and premature cessation of ovarian activity in a woman. The incidence of the disease, in men aged 40 to 59 for example, (from 9 per 1,000 when one of these factors is present to 77 per 1,000 when any three of them are present.