In today's Trib

1. Mammograms may not reveal tumors in women under 50 because the tumors and dense breast tissue show up as the same color. Read Trib story here. Here is the study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

2. A federal appeals court in St. Louis reinstated a lawsuit that accuses Costco, Safeway, Target, WalMart, WildOats and Aurora of claiming their milk was organic when it was not. For those of us who had estrogen-positive tumors, this matters, because bovine growth hormone can possibly feed new tumors. However, there's no test to determine if milk contains BGH. So you can put your trust in a label that declares there's no BGH. Or you can opt for organic milk, which means the cows have been grazing naturally and haven't had antibiotics (unless they were sick) or hormones. More here.

3. Hospice patients have a better quality of life than those who die at the hospital. That ain't news. What's somewhat interesting is that caregivers of patients who die in an ICU are at heightened risk for post-traumatic stress disorder. More here, where there's a link to the Dana-Farber study.

Read More

Surprise, surprise

[Smile when you smash that breast!]

OK, I have to admit that I'm late with this news. I found it as I was filing away a page from the Tribune about what your greenest options are re: shopping bags, diapers, coffee holders and the like. So this news is late, and it states the obvious. But it's always nice to have your world view or Weltanschauung validated, as long as you can forget that these are real people involved who are suffering. Oh, but we shouldn't forget.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released stats July 6 on breast and colon cancer screenings among people age 50-75--or middle age, according to my calculations. Among the findings:
-People with health insurance were more likely to get screened than those without.
-Minorities were less likely to have screenings. American Indian and Alaska Native women were least likely to get mammograms.
-Women with less than a high school education and women who were low income were less likely than others to get mammograms.

Interestingly, the Tribune gave the story seven lines and two charts, accentuating the positive: Screenings rise for 2 cancers. It's odd, though: I couldn't find the original story, which was from Reuters, online. I found a longer AP story on the Trib's web site. That one mentioned the variables of education and insurance, but not race. It emphasized that more people are getting tested for colon cancer, but the same percentage of women were getting mammograms in 2008 as they did in 2002. The New York Times ran a piece the next week based on a CDC update, emphasizing the negative: Gaps Found in Breast Cancer Testing, noting that equal rates of black and white women were getting mammograms, though fewer Native Americans. The Times did not mention income disparity .

This all goes along with my theory that if everyone were rich, we'd be much better off. Rich people are thinner and healthier and usually more educated. Our obesity problem would decline and we'd all fit into our airplane seats.

Read More

Savage Inequalities...

...to borrow the title of Jonathan Kozol's book on education in this country. Here is a piece by Carol Marin on mammograms in our fair county. It's great that all the mainstream breast cancer organizations push for early detection. Here's a glimpse at the obstacles to testing.

Women falling through holes in safety net (http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/506959,CST-EDT-marin12.article)
August 12, 2007
CAROL MARIN cmarin@suntimes.com
It is one of life's leveling moments: There you awkwardly sit in a wrinkled, blue cotton hospital gown you had trouble tying, waiting for your name to be called so you can untie, strip and be squeezed into the vice-like grip of a mammogram machine.
It was early Wednesday morning last week, and I was the only woman in the waiting area of Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Lynn Sage Clinic until Jenny Vega burst into the room. I'm calling her that, though it's not her real name, to protect her privacy.
Jenny was about 42, a big-boned woman with wild, wavy hair and a breathlessness about her as she collapsed into the chair next to me.
"You been here before?" she asked.
Yes, I said, I come here every year.
"Whoa, really? It's my first time and I'm scared," she confided. "I've never had a drink in my life, but I'm getting cirrhosis of the liver because of having hepatitis C."
Heroin user? Infected by dirty needles?
"Yep," said Jenny. "When they cut my methadone treatments way back, I said to hell with it, I'll go cold turkey. I'm not on anything now."
Why the mammogram?
''They sent me here for tests," she said, not making it clear who "they" were.
Just then, a medical staffer called Jenny into one of the examining rooms. I never got to ask if she has insurance, but I'd bet anything she doesn't.
If I'm right about that, then Jenny's examination at an excellent, respectful place like the Lynn Sage Clinic is a hopeful sign that pieces of our frayed public health safety net still exist. Vouchers for poor women, financial assistance from community groups and federal funding funneled through the Illinois Breast and Cervical Cancer Program fill some critical gaps.
The looming gap, however -- the biggest hole in the safety net -- is still at Cook County's Stroger Hospital. Because of backlogs of thousands of unread screening and diagnostic mammograms, much of that service to poor women has been suspended until the hospital can bring that backlog down.
''The program will relaunch in October,'' said Cook County spokesman Sean Howard, who added that President Todd Stroger is also setting up a nonprofit foundation to fund a fleet of mammogram screening vans for community outreach.
''The two vans we have are in deplorable condition and must be replaced," Howard said.
In the meantime, the county is referring women to other clinics and hospitals.
But it isn't working.
Here's why, according to Jude Andrews, executive director of Y-ME Illinois: When a woman arrives at Stroger Hospital, she is told to go home and wait by the phone to receive a referral to another health-care provider. In poor and transient populations, that in itself is an iffy way to proceed.
If and when she gets that call, when the woman arrives at the assigned clinic, she learns they need her records and X-ray films from past mammograms, requiring a trip back to Stroger, a $22 fee, and another wait to see if they can even locate her file. Then another trip to pick it up.
Provided she has the time and carfare for all those journeys, maybe she'll finally get her mammogram.
''Most women have stopped going to Stroger,'' Andrews said. ''We don't know how many women have been rerouted.''
''Y-ME,'' she said, ''has left a lot of messages on [county hospital] answering machines but hasn't been called back. . . . There's a real transparency issue here.''
Other advocacy groups such as Gilda's Club and the Sisters Network, she said, complain they've hit the same information stonewall.
Howard said he would look into that and called back Friday morning to say that they were addressing the problem ''as we speak.''
Meanwhile, back at the Lynn Sage Clinic last week, as my name was called to go in, Jenny was coming out. She looked relieved.
''It wasn't so bad!'' she said of her first mammogram. ''Good luck to you, Carol.''
Good luck to you, too, Jenny.

Read More