Thermography Benefits Every Woman Should know About
Breast cancer is among the most dangerous diseases that affect women all over the world. To this day, the best thing every woman can do is make regular screenings, to detect the disease at its early stage. This greatly boosts the chances of successfully managing the condition.
Among other breast screening methods, thermography has become a go-to solution for many women out there. In essence, a thermographic scan involves an infra-red camera, which takes the temperature of the upper side of the body. It highlights any areas of increased activity. Cancer tumours usually have a blood supply of their own. This shows an infra-red scan as an area with increased activity and alerts doctors that something is going on. The benefits of this sort of scanning are many:
- The method is non-invasive – thermography is a non-invasive screening method. This means there is no poking and prodding involved whatsoever with it. This is the first difference between it and mammography. The latter is a method that applies a certain amount of pressure to the breast, to produce an image. That is not the case with thermography. All that a woman needs to do is standstill, with no clothes on the upper side of the body. The camera takes the image and that is all. There is no level of discomfort such as in mammography, which can be problematic for women with tender and larger breasts.
- The method is safe – mammography remains the golden standard for breast screening methods, but there is a major risk associated with it. After all, it exposes the tissue to a certain amount of radiation, to get a picture. Then there is thermography, which involves no radiation whatsoever. With the different kinds of technology that it uses, it takes an image of the breasts without any risk for the person. This is no small advantage.
- It works not just for breast cancer screening – another point in favour of thermography lies with the fact that it can provide useful information for the treatment of other conditions. For example, sometimes doctors check for inflammation, digestion function, lung/heart health and diabetes with thermographic scans. It makes for a versatile approach to helping pinpoint the problem and aid not just women, but also men.
- It is a nice supplemental test – thermography works well in conjunction with many other tests, namely mammography. That is why doctors usually recommend doing both screening methods. If one fails to provide a definitive picture of the condition, the other can compensate. It never hurts to have more data.
- The screening is very easy to accomplish – another thing about thermography is just how easy it is to do the test. Unlike mammography, which requires applying pressure to the breasts, thermography is much easier to execute. The way it works is just by having the woman remove the upper part of their clothing, and standing still while the infra-red camera takes its readings. It is usually the case that women need to remain in the same room to acclimate to the same temperature. There is nothing about the procedure that is uncomfortable. It is a zero-contact one, it doesn’t call for applying pressure to breasts and there is no pain whatsoever. This makes it rather easy to execute and a much more preferable option in that regard, compared to mammography.
The thermography screening method has made its way into present-day breast prevention guidelines in a fascinating way. It is good that women all over the world can now rely on another tool in the battle against breast cancer.
