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The constant improvement of technology promotes changes in radiologic screening practices: in the U.S., for example, about 70% of mammography machines are now digital, although not many data exist on the diagnostic accuracy of digital versus conventional film-screen mammography. Using data from [...]
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In women with average breast cancer risk, the USPSTF (U.S. Preventive Services Task Force) recommends screening mammograms every two years, starting at age 50. Despite this recommendation, many doctors and many patients require a mammogram before that age, without counting cases in which mammograms [...]
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In the U.S., Australia and most Western European countries, mammography screening has decreased breast cancer mortality. To analyze this result according to the abovementioned countries, a group of researchers compared a few European countries based on geographical contiguity, social status and [...]
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Pressure measurement is associated, as we well know, with many accuracy problems, not last the “warning” effect caused by doctors, beside the variability of pressure itself within the day and the tendency, by health personnel, to round off results in order to make them finish with a zero. In this [...]
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There are various doubts on the usefulness of colonoscopy screening, since it has not been ascertained yet whether and to what extent this procedure decreases the risk of colorectal cancer. With a case-control study performed in Germany, 1,600 subjects (averagely 70 years of age) affected by [...]
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The diagnosis of peripheral arterial diseases is generally based on clinical reports and on the measurement of arm/ankle pressure index. But when we are before the need to proceed with revascularization surgeries, imaging techniques are obviously used to have a surer diagnosis and to quantify the [...]
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The American Cancer Society in 1992 has released the recommendations to perform a “basic” mammography at 35 years of age, but not only isn’t this practice put into action for scientific popularization by mass media, but it is not even encouraged by general practitioners themselves. In the USA, [...]
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Colonoscopy is more and more frequently used for colorectal cancer screening, but there are no wide randomized trials comparing colonoscopy and flexible sigmoidoscopy or comparing both procedures with the non-performance of endoscopic screenings. The U. S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends [...]
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Magnetic resonance elastography is a recently introduced technique in order to avoid the problem of performing liver biopsies: with this method, the difference in elasticity of liver parenchyma (and consequently the presence and the extension of a possible fibrosis) is calculated through the [...]
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Mammography decreases mortality for breast cancer of 15-20%, but ultrasonography is capable to reveal tumours that can escape to X-ray (above all in very dense breasts, which are already themselves at a greater cancer risk). Considering the fact that ultrasonography reliability is very [...]