FDA panel against use of Avastin for breast cancer

A panel of cancer experts ruled Wednesday that Avastin - the world's best-selling cancer drug, developed by Genentech in South San Francisco - should no longer be used in breast cancer patients because of concerns the medicine didn't work as well in follow-up studies and may cause deadly bleeding.

New breast cancer guidelines "unsafe": women

More than eight out of 10 women say new guidelines recommending against routine breast cancer screening of women under 50 are "unsafe," according to a small survey. But most of the women also grossly overestimate their risk of developing the disease, according to researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Health minister reaches out to cancer patient refused Herceptin

They spoke woman to woman, but the talk between Ontario’s Health Minister and a breast-cancer patient could not have been more loaded: One has the power to change the other’s life.

Jill Anzarut, 35, has been pushing for a drug the provincial cancer agency will not provide – Herceptin – because her tumour at .5 cm was deemed too small.

Annual breast cancer checks for higher risk women 'would save lives'

Such a move could save about 50 lives a year and offer many more peace of mind, said Professor Stephen Duffy, one of Britain's top cancer screening experts.

Currently all women aged 50 to 70 are offered a mammogram every three years under the NHS's Breast Screening Programme.

But Prof Duffy, of the Wolfson Institute for Preventative Medicine in London, said there was now strong evidence that those with a moderate or strong family history of breast cancer should be offered annual mammograms from age 40.

Meghalaya to have mass breast cancer screening

Meghalaya will be the first state in India to have mass screening programmes in all its districts to detect breast, oral and cervix cancer among women, says an NGO working for cancer detection.

Roko Cancer Charitable Trust, which has embarked on a Private-Public Partnership (PPP) mode project with Meghalya government to provide and run fully-equipped mobile breast detection units, said the entire state will be covered by mass screening programme by 2013.

Now simple, cheap nuclear medicine technique to diagnose breast cancer

The Director and Chief of Nuclear Medicine, Utkal Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneshwar, Birendra K Das has said scintimammography - a nuclear medicine imaging instrument - is a powerful method in the diagnosis of the breast cancer. In this procedure, manipulation of breasts such as compression required to be done during conventional mammography is not needed.

The Director who has been doing the highest number of Scintimammography in his institute in the country said that there are many techniques to detect the breast cancer and the most common being X-ray mammography which has been used for decades for early detection of breast cancer.

“But unfortunately the X-ray mammography has very poor specificity. The patients are asked further to undertake biopsy and Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) for the detection . Other modalities like Sonography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and PET (Positron Emission Tomography) are also being used for the diagnosis,” the director said.

Dutch doctors to test new breast cancer treatment

Dutch doctors will try to administer a new treatment to breast cancer patients in December by using ultrasound heating to kill tumor cells, the world's first attempt of its kind.

Doctors will heat the breast tumors to a temperature of 60 to 90 degrees by using ultrasound technique, tumor cells die off and thus removed from the body, local press quoted sources from University Medical Center(UMC) of Utrecht as saying on Tuesday.