THEY say prevention is the best cure when it comes to breast cancer. But when you?re dealing with a disease that is eerily painless in its earliest stage and eludes detection during self-breast examination or even a mammogram and ultrasound, preventing the number one cancer that afflicts Filipinas today from progressing to fatal proportions is, indeed, a tall order.
Catching breast-cancer cells before they are even breast-cancer cells, then, is key. It?s also what the state-of-the-art machine called Medical Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging (MDITI) does.
Employed for the last two decades in rheumatology, neurology, chiropractic, sports medicine, pediatrics, and other fields of medicine, and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, this screening technology uses infrared scanning to create a ?thermogram??a graphical map that shows suspicious ?hot spots? or abnormal temperature changes in the body.
An unusual mark in the breast or lymphatic area may be nothing-but it may also be the start of precystic activity (up to 10 years before it develops into a full-blown cancer), which a mammogram or ultrasound cannot detect.
Recommended for women between the ages of 20 and 50, the MDITI screening is done in the privacy of the office that brought in the technology from the States, HealthQuest Research.
After filling up a form detailing her medical history, a patient slips into a lightweight robe, sits about three feet away from the machine and, with her arms raised, elbows bent, fingers touching the sides of her head, poses on her front, left side, right side, left oblique side, and right oblique side, while the machine creates a thermal image of her body from those angles.
Painless, noninvasive, and safe even for pregnant women, the procedure lasts 15 minutes. Dr. Roderick Tan, a naturophatic specialist, the founder of HealthQuest Research, and a US-certified thermographer, checks the infrared images for unusual marks, but the results are also sent to a US lab for verification. Official results may be had in five to seven working days.
Stacked up next to a mammogram, which boasts an 84-percent accuracy rate, MDITI comes close at 83-percent, thus making it the perfect complement to the long-standing method of breast cancer detection.
?It can definitely be used to support a mammogram,? agrees Tan. More importantly, the MDITI gives women more time and options to take action against a disease that has robbed countless families and friends of a loved one gone too soon.
Visit HealthQuest Research at Unit 1009, Tycoon Center, Pearl Drive, Ortigas Center, Pasig. Call 7063876 or 0917-8168707.
