ADDRESS THIS LETTER WITH YOUR INFORMATION AND USE
AND DISTRIBUTE. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PERSONALIZE THIS
LETTER HOWEVER YOU FEEL IS APPROPRIATE TO YOUR CASE.
To Whom It May Concern:
As a woman concerned about my breast healthcare, I am asking
you, as my insurance carrier to cover the cost of my Digital Infrared
Thermal Image that I have had done as an adjunctive breast
screening for breast cancer. There are many compelling reasons for a
woman to avail herself of this valuable technology, and for my
insurance company to cover the cost of this testing.
1. Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging has been FDA approved for
adjunctive breast screening since 1982.
2. It is completely risk free exam, with no radiation exposure.
3. There are no potentially harmful contrast agents used.
4. There is no painful and potentially damaging compression.
5. It is extremely cost effective and affordable.
6. It provides functional health information that is not provided
by any other screening modality.
7. DITI is safe for pregnant and nursing women.
8. DITI is effective for women under age 50 and those with
dense breast tissue.
9. DITI may be used for women for whom other imaging
modalities may be inappropriate, for example, women with
breast implants.
10. It takes 8-10 years for a tumor to grow large enough to
bounce off an Xray mammography. DITI can see these
earliest subclinical changes, years ahead of that time, before
the disease of breast cancer has the opportunity to ravage a
life.
Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging is an FDA-approved
adjunctive breast screening modality. It is based on the principle that
the formation of new blood vessels to feed a growing tumor
(neoangiogenesis) along with the dilatation of exisiting blood vessels
create heat in the precancerous and surrounding tissues due to the
higher level of metabolic activity. This higher level of heat is easily
distinguished in what are normally cool, healthy breast tissue. Under
strict temperature protocols with technologically advanced high
resolution cameras, the body temperature is detected, analyzed, and
digitally produced into high resolution diagnostic images of these
temperature variations. These abnormal thermal signals may be the
earliest indications that a disease process is underway or currently
present.
Consider this analogy: if someone is having a cardiac workup,
that work up with an echocardiogram alone as a structural exam,
would be incomplete study. To be a full work up, a person should
also have accompanying blood work, lipid panel, C-reactive protein,
homocysteine levels, etc. Thermography is the equivalent of this
blood work. It gives a more complete, fuller picture. A person may
have normal cardiac structure on echo, but have blood work levels
that are abnormal, that may pose health risks. Echocardiogram alone
would not pick that up. The two modalities are not in competition
with each other; they work in conjunction, providing different pieces
of the puzzle. So it is with Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging and
mammography. Alone, mammography provides an inadequate and
incomplete picture of a woman’s breast health.
Infrared imaging, based more on process than
structural changes, and requiring neither contact,
compression, radiation nor venous access, provides
pertinent and practical complimentary information to
both clinical examination and mammography. Quality
controlled abnormal infrared images heighten our
index of suspicion in cases where clinical or
mammographic findings are equivocal or nonspecific
and signal the need for further investigation rather
than observation. With the addition of infrared
imaging, our sensitivity of image detection has
increased from 83% to 93%.
John
Keyserlingk,
M.D.,
Ph.D.
Oncological
Surgeon
Ville
Marie
Breast
and
Oncology
Center
Department of Oncology
Hospital, Montreal, Quebec
-
St.
Mary's
According to the New Jersey Cancer Center, the leading cause of
death for young women, ages 25 to 30 is: breast cancer. Yet, with all
of our evolved western technology, our medical system has not even
developed a protocol for screening women in this age group. Breast
cancer in pregnant women is the most commonly diagnosed cancer,
along with skin cancer. Again, lack of effective protocols delays
diagnosis of this terrible disease.
Thermography is a tool that we can be using to help identify
these young women most at risk for breast cancer at younger age.
Most young women start screening for cervical cancer at age 18. In
the same way, if we started screening women with thermography,
we would be able to see these early risk factors for breast cancer, and
follow these women more closely. The terrible diagnosis of breast
cancer could potentially even be avoided by some, or caught at the
earliest possible time. This younger age group of women typically
develop more aggressive breast cancers. It takes 8-10 years for a
tumor the size of a dime to grow; so if women are dying, or even just
diagnosed at age 25, their cancer started growing at age 15-17 years
old. That is a rather sobering thought for most of us.
However, it remains that there is a long subclinical window of
opportunity to catch this disease process in the earliest stages. We
have the window; we just have to make the most of it.
Thermography may be the least invasive, risk-free assessment tool
that we have. Perhaps this early warning would have made a
difference for Susan G. Komen, and the many other women who
have lost their lives to breast cancer.
I again ask you to cover the cost of this simple, effective breast
screening exam. The following are excerpts and abstracts of journal
articles and studies on Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging.
Sincerely,
Your Insurance Subscriber
“American Journal of Radiology”
Received January 8, 2002, accepted after revision, July 10, 2002. Abstract:
OBJECTIVE.
The purpose of this clinical trial was to determine the
efficacy of a dynamic computerized infrared imaging
system for distinguishing between benign and
malignant lesions in patients undergoing biopsy on
the basis of mammographic findings.
SUBJECTS AND METHODS.
A 4-year clinical trial was conducted at five institutions
using infrared imaging of patients for whom breast
biopsy had been recommended. The data from a
blinded subject set were obtained in 769 subjects with
875 biopsied lesions resulting in 187 malignant and
688 benign findings. The infrared technique records a
series of sequential images that provides an
assessment of the infrared information in a
mammographically identified area. The suspicious
area is localized on the infrared image by the
radiologist using mammograms, and an index of
suspicion is determined, yielding a negative or
positive result.
RESULTS.
In the 875 biopsied lesions, the index of suspicion
resulted in a 97% sensitivity, a 14% specificity, a 95%
negative predictive value, and a 24% positive
predictive value. Lesions that were assessed as
false-negative by infrared analysis were
microcalcifications, so an additional analysis was
performed in a subset excluding lesions described
only as microcalcification. In this restricted subset of
448 subjects with 479 lesions and 110 malignancies,
the index of suspicion resulted in a 99% sensitivity, an
18% specificity, a 99% negative predictive value, and
a 27% positive predictive value. Analysis of infrared
imaging performance
in all 875 biopsied lesions revealed that specificity
was statistically improved in dense breast tissue
compared with fatty breast tissue.
CONCLUSION.
Infrared imaging offers a safe noninvasive procedure
that would be valuable as an adjunct to
mammography in determining whether a lesion is
benign or malignant.
“Journal of IEEE Engineering”
May/June 2000 pp 30-41. Summary:
Functional Infrared Imaging of the Breast
Digital mammography is being developed to further
advance the contribution of structural imaging such as
mammography and ultrasound. However, there is
now new emphasis on developing functional imaging
that can exploit early vascular and metabolic changes
associated with tumor initiation that often predate
morphological changes that most of our current
structural imaging modalities still depend on; thus, the
enthusiasm in the development of sestamibi
scanning, Doppler ultrasound, and MRI of the breast [
16]. Unfortunately, as promising as these modalities
are, they are often too cumbersome, costly,
inaccessible, or require intravenous access to be
used as first-line detection modalities alongside
clinical exam and mammography.
On the other hand, integrating IR imaging, a safe and
practical modality, into the first-line strategy, can
increase the sensitivity at this crucial stage by
providing an early warning of an abnormality that in
some cases is not evident in the other components
(Fig. 5). Combining IR imaging and mammography in
an IR-assisted mammography strategy is particularly
appealing in the current era of increased emphasis on
screening by imaging and less reliance on palpation
as tumor size further decreases.
“Surgery Today”
2003. 33:243-248.) summary:
Relationship Between Microvessel Density and
Thermographic Hot Areas in Breast Cancer
In the clinical management of breast cancer,
thermography may play two potential roles. First, it
may be utilized as a method of screening for breast
lesions, either malignant or benign; and second, it
may be able to differentiate malignant from benign
lesions that have
been detected by other methods.1,2,7 The advantage
of thermography lies in the fact that it is noninvasive
and does not require irradiation. As a measure for
detecting tumors of the breast, it has a false-negative
rate of nearly 10%, which is similar to that of
mammography or
ultrasound.