BreastHealth UK launch an innovative private breast screening service including a state of the art digital infrared scanner at Spire Cambridge Lea Hospital
One in nine women in the UK will develop breast cancer and every year more than 44,000 new cases are diagnosed. Most of the new breast cancers arise in women with no prior family history of breast cancer. The earlier breast cancer is detected, the better the chances of survival and the less the personal trauma.
Private breast screening is now more readily available to a wider age group not currently support by the NHS screening programme with this new affordable breast screening service at the Spire Cambridge Lea Hospital – the first of its kind to include a digital infrared scanner.
Following an initial breast health analysis, patients are offered a personalised breast screening programme that may include mammography, clinical breast examination, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and digital infrared imaging by Sentinel BreastScan.
Sentinel BreastScan has been shown to have a high sensitivity at detecting early breast cancer in two North American trials. It has FDA approval for use in US as an “adjunctive” or additional breast screening tool and gained a CE mark (approval for use in Europe) in early 2007.
Mr Gordon Wishart, Consultant Breast Surgeon and head of the Cambridge Breast Unit at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, says:
“It is fitting that BreastHealth UK should have chosen Cambridge to launch this programme given its growing national and international reputation for breast cancer research and treatment”.
“The NHS breast screening programme has been an enormous success for women over 50 years old. Mammography however is much less sensitive in women under 50 so any new technology that can be used in combination with it should improve our chances of detecting breast cancer at an earlier stage in these younger women”.
BreastHealth UK have recognised that an increasing number of women under 50 now develop breast cancer and that women in this age group with, and especially without, a family history of breast cancer often have difficulty getting access to additional screening.
Mr Troels Jordansen, Managing Director of BreastHealth UK, says:
“With modern state of the art facilities, and conveniently located close to the A14 & M11, the Spire Cambridge Lea Hospital provides an ideal location to launch the first BreastHealth UK clinic”
“We want women to feel ‘looked after’ by our service and that they belong to a screening programme that can offer them the most up to date breast screening technology. The NHS offers a good breast screening service, but we were keen to focus on introducing new technologies with a special focus on younger women who are not currently eligible for NHS screening. We are already exploring new and innovative services that we hope to be able to add to our portfolio later this year”.
The first BreastHealth UK clinic will be launched at the Spire Cambridge Lea Hospital in Cambridge on 28 April 2008.
More about the Sentinel BreastScan:
Sentinel BreastScan, a state of the art digital infrared scanner with computer technology, has been shown to have a high sensitivity at detecting breast cancer in women of all ages in two early USA studies. It has been developed by Infrared Sciences Corporation, New York (www.infraredsciences.com), has FDA approval as an additional adjunctive diagnostic tool for breast cancer detection and is CE marked (approved for use in Europe).
Sentinel BreastScan is non-invasive, involves no radiation or breast compression, and works by detecting areas of the breast that do not cool down during a 4-minute period of breast cooling. As breast cancers grow they encourage their own additional blood supply (angiogenesis) and these new blood vessels do not contract like other blood vessels in the body. This abnormal blood flow can therefore be detected by Sentinel BreastScan.
For more information on this breast screening programme please contact: 01223 352200
For appointments please contact: 0800 085 6616.
www.BreastHealthUK.com
