As noted in previous posts, my faith in the Ministry of Health actually instigating a screening and awareness program for anything including ingrowing toenails is at an all time low. So here’s me taking some initiative and trying to get people to do their own screening for themselves. Oh and all links are to articles and references. I find it makes posts a wee bit easier to digest overall.
Anyone who knows me, knows that my fascination with boobies and hoohoos has been there since time immemorial. Infact, those who knew me when I first got home would have remembered that my original passion lay in breast surgery …. sadly my interest in operating on breasts waned and eventually realized that breasts are something for me to enjoy …. not operate on …… besides building the perfect breasts is a practically impossible task. Sternomancy or the study of chest and breast contour has been around since the early 18th century with no logical conclusion having been drawn despite over 2 centuries of review and debate on the topic. And to this day plastic surgeons haven’t quiet gotten a grasp on what girls want out of their implants……
One thing we can all agree on however is that missing a diagnosis of breast cancer should be a crime. We have had a 3 fold increase in breast cancer within the Kuwait population since Micheal Jackson did the moonwalk! Which basically means that we need a screening program, fast and while breastcarekuwait.org does look very nice it doesn’t really push the point that people will actively die in bigger numbers from a curable disease simply because they didn’t know they had to be screened for it ……
This is what I’m trying to do having exhausted all venues within the ministry, I guess that the best way to clear my conscience is to just write it and let you scavenge for it. National breast cancer screening programs work, they have saved lives in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the NHS in the UK*. The problem is that there isn’t a single breast cancer screening guideline, in the U.K. people get mammograms from the age of 50 and in the U.S. it’s from the age of 50, Canada has decided to limit mammograms to the age of 50 in the general population and the age of 40 in the high risk groups (where high risk is basically family history of breast cancer). Please bear in mind that the reason why these guidelines are so arbitrary is because every country is different and every screening program has to work within certain budget limits and population trends and so in most cases the guidelines are reached by consensus looking at cost benefit analysis and things like that. Having said that I’m pretty sure that the word consensus has yet to be used to describe anything in Kuwait. Period.
So instead what I’ve done is look at what other people did and all the studies involved and try and make a set of rules that are purely based on data and proven benefit. And so here is KTDP’s breast awareness guide:
1)If your boyfriend, lover, girlfriend or significant other feels a lump get it checked out ASAP. More cancers are caught incidentally than by self examination.
2)Having said that if u feel a breast lump, get it checked out. ASAP
3)If you are between 20-30 with no relatives with breast or ovarian or colon cancer and no symptoms a clinical breast exam performed by a doctor every year or two should be enough.
4)If you are at the age of 40 or above doing an ultrasound mammography is practically a must, there is zero harm and strong evidence of benefit in this age group.
5)If you are between the age of 50-75 ultrasound mammography is not a good idea, the pictures just aren’t accurate, you’ll need a formal x-ray mammography every 1-2 years. (I know the literature says 3 years, but by the time u get an appointment it’ll be 3 years! )
6)If you have any direct family member with any breast, ovarian, uterine or colon cancer in constellation or unison, u need genetic testing for BRCA 1 and 2 genes.
All of the above is based on the latest breast cancer literature.
Oh and if u click on the link above you’ll also see what’s coming ’round the corner for breast cancer screening, MRI mammography will provide us with even better more accurate results as will the use of genetic markers in hair samples. So chances are within the next 20 years breast cancer will be a disease that we cannot only cure but predict and treat before it happens …..
*Yes, I am a fan of the way people do it in the U.K. Simply because the combine cost, safety and accuracy through knowledge and appropriate judgement, something I have yet to see in any north American …..
