Discuss at least three diagnostic imaging procedures used in the workup of a typical breast cancer patient.

What is a sentinel node biopsy procedure and why is it performed?

Why do you think the detection and diagnosis of disease have come to rely more and more on pathology and radiology?

answer

watching

views

For unlimited access to Homework Help, a Homework+ subscription is required.

You have 0 free answers left.
Get unlimited access to 3.8 million step-by-step answers.

Get unlimited access

Already have an account? Log in

Irving HeathcoteLv2

28 Sep 2019

Unlock all answers

Get 1 free homework help answer.

Already have an account? Log in

Related questions

While the concepts of screening and surveillance are intertwined there are subtle distinctions between the two ideas. The main goals are data collection to measure magnitude, changes, and trends in populations. The objective is to create interventions in defined populations. On the contrary, testing to identify individuals with infection or disease is the main goal of screening. The area of breast cancer screening and breast cancer surveillance has been a point of contention. Please read the following article and weigh in on which side seems most convincing:

There is a heated debate in this country about the risks and benefits associated with screening mammography. Proponents on both sides of the debate feel equally as strongly for or against annual breast cancer screening. Despite oneâs opinions regarding the utility of screening mammography, it is difficult to deny that the rates of false-positive exams, the rates of overdiagnosis, and the cost of annual screening are too high. We can do better. It is time to stop devoting energy to arguing about data from studies performed decades ago and start working toward gathering new evidence. In late 2015, we will initiate the WISDOM study to investigate the safety and effectiveness of a personalized breast cancer screening model. This model will use a comprehensive risk assessment process to determine individualized screening regimens for women in the interventional arm. The data collected in this study will better inform the screening debate and will allow us to shed more light and less heat on the issue.

There is a great debate in this country about the risks and benefits of screening mammography. On one side of the debate are those in favor of the one-size-fits-all model of performing annual mammograms starting at the age of 40 for women who are not known to be at greatly elevated risk of developing breast cancer. The radiology community argues that this model reduces the rates of interval cancers, aids early detection, and should not be changed. On the other side of the debate are those who support the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations to screen women biennially starting at age 50, and to screen women in their 40s based on personal preferences regarding the potential benefits and harms of screening.¹ Specialists on this side of the debate believe that annual screening results in unacceptably high rates of false-positive recalls, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment.

Recently, the USPSTF published a draft update to the 2009 breast cancer screening recommendations, and the debate has once again intensified. The solution to this problem is not to continue the debate with repetitious reviews of studies that were performed more than 30 years ago, but to focus ahead on how to make breast cancer screening safer and more effective. The time has come to put the debate to rest by conducting a modern-era screening trial.

Before focusing on the future, let us first take a moment to review the current state of breast cancer screening in the United States. The majority of providers in this country continue to recommend annual screening starting at age 40.² Proponents of annual screening mammography cite a resulting relative reduction in breast cancer mortality of 21%, which is based on data from randomized screening trials performed in the 1970s and 1980s.³ However, this estimated benefit comes with significant drawbacks. After 10 years of annual screening, over one-half of women screened will receive a false-positive recall, and 7% to 9% will undergo a benign biopsy.^4,5 False-positive recalls and benign biopsies can cause long-lasting psychological distress that can negatively impact a womanâs willingness to undergo screening for breast cancer in the future. Additionally, false-positive recalls and overdiagnosis cost the United States an estimated $4 billion per year,⁶ and screening in aggregate is estimated to cost between $8 and 10 billion per year.⁷ This estimate is based on a screening mammogram costing between $135 and $195. If the cost of mammography increases, the overall cost of breast cancer screening increases proportionally. As a country and as healthcare professionals, we can and should do better.

Breast cancer screening should harness the advances that have been made in breast cancer risk assessment and our understanding of breast cancer tumor biology. Screening should be more effective at finding relevant and consequential cancers, and should result in fewer benign biopsies. Screening should also be better integrated with prevention. Lastly, screening should be more cost-effective. A personalized screening model could potentially achieve all of these goals.

The aim of a personalized screening model would be to focus resources on those women who are most likely to benefit. The foundation of the model would be a comprehensive risk assessment that would take into consideration a womanâs classical risk factors for breast cancer, such as her personal and family history of breast disease. This comprehensive risk assessment would also include an evaluation of breast density and germline genetic testing. These risk factors would then be placed into a breast cancer risk model that would estimate the womanâs 5-year risk of developing breast cancer, and personalized screening recommendations would be made according to this risk. Women at high risk of developing breast cancer would be screened more frequently, and women at low risk would be screened less frequently. This risk estimation could also be used to make recommendations regarding chemoprevention, thereby integrating screening and prevention, which is the real key to reducing mortality from breast cancer.

This model has the potential to optimize the benefits of mammography in the context of modern systemic therapy while minimizing harms. Using a similar risk model in 3 independent study populations, it has been shown that 50% of cancers occur in women with the top 20% predicted risk.⁸ This model is also practical because these risk factors are easy to assess, and it is estimated to be more cost-effective than annual screening, despite the use of genetic testing, which has decreased in cost significantly since the Supreme Court ruling in June 2013 that stated that the human genome could not be patented.

Personalized screening may be the way forward, but this can only be determined in the setting of a randomized controlled trial. In the fall of 2015, a randomized controlled trial comparing personalized breast cancer screening with annual screening will be initiated within the Athena Breast Health Network that spans the University of California and the Sanford Health system in the Midwest. This study will be called the WISDOM study (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk). We have received a large grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to perform this trial, and are also working with payers and self-insured employers, such as Blue Shield of California and UC Health, to create a Coverage with Evidence Development policy that will cover the medical costs of the trial. Using surrogate endpoints and long-term follow-up, we aim to determine whether personalized screening is as effective, less morbid, more preferred by women, and enables prevention more as compared with annual screening. Our hope is that this trial will provide us with the information we need in order to determine the safest and most effective way to screen women for breast cancer. Then, and only then, will we be able to put âThe Great Mammography Debateâ to rest.

As we move toward a more biology-based approach to the treatment of diseases, our approach to screening for and preventing those diseases should follow suit. The opportunity before us is to learn who is at risk for which type of breast cancer, and to optimize our screening and prevention strategies for each individual according to her personal risk. Over the last 20 years, many advances have been made in our understanding of the risk factors that contribute to a womanâs risk of developing breast cancer. The time has come for us to harness this knowledge and apply it in an evidence-generating fashion to shed more light and less heat on the screening controversy.

Do you believe that US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations should be followed or do you believe screening should start at age 40? Why or why not?

Discussion: Assessing the Ears, Nose, and Throat Most ear, nose, and throat conditions that arise in non-critical care settings are minor in nature. However, subtle symptoms can sometimes escalate into life-threatening conditions that require prompt assessment and treatment. Nurses conducting assessments of the ears, nose, and throat must be able to identify the small differences between life-threatening conditions and benign ones. For instance, if a patient with a sore throat and a runny nose also has inflamed lymph nodes, the inflammation is probably due to the pathogen causing the sore throat rather than a case of throat cancer. With this knowledge and a sufficient patient health history, a nurse would not need to escalate the assessment to a biopsy or an MRI of the lymph nodes, but would probably perform a simple strep test. In this Discussion, you consider case studies of abnormal findings from patients in a clinical setting. You determine what history should be collected from the patients, what physical exams and diagnostic tests should be conducted, and formulate a differential diagnosis with several possible conditions. Note: By Day 1 of this week, your instructor will have assigned you to one of the following case studies to review for this Discussion. Also, your Discussion post should be in the SOAP Note format, rather than the traditional narrative style Discussion posting format. Refer to Chapter 2 of the Sullivan text and the Comprehensive SOAP Template in the Week 4 Learning Resources for guidance. Remember that not all comprehensive SOAP data are included in every patient case. Case 1: Nose Focused Examination Richard is a 50-year-old male with nasal congestion, sneezing, rhinorrhea, and postnasal drainage. Richard has struggled with an itchy nose, eyes, palate, and ears for 5 days. As you check his ears and throat for redness and inflammation, you notice him touch his fingers to the bridge of his nose to press and rub there. He says he's taken Mucinex OTC the past two nights to help him breathe while he sleeps. When you ask if the Mucinex has helped at all, he sneers slightly and gestures that the improvement is only minimal. Richard is alert and oriented. He has pale, boggy nasal mucosa with clear thin secretions and enlarged nasal turbinates, which obstruct airway flow but his lungs are clear. His tonsils are not enlarged but his throat is mildly erythematous. To prepare: Review this week's Learning Resources and consider the insights they provide. Consider what history would be necessary to collect from the patient. Consider what physical exams and diagnostic tests would be appropriate to gather more information about the patient's condition. How would the results be used to make a diagnosis? Identify at least 10 possible conditions that may be considered in a differential diagnosis for the patient. Note: Before you submit your initial post, replace the subject line (âWeek 5 Discussionâ) with âReview of Case Study ___,â identifying the number of the case study you were assigned. Post a description of the health history you would need to collect from the patient in the case study to which you were assigned. Explain what physical exams and diagnostic tests would be appropriate and how the results would be used to make a diagnosis. List five different possible conditions for the patient's differential diagnosis and justify why you selected each.

Given the scenario/situation, respond to all questions with complete sentences.

Scientists have been studying the effects of Starkagaren Disease, which is regulated by the stgn gene, in cultured normal and breast cancer cell lines. They have fused a yellow fluorescent probe to the end of the stgn gene to study the disease more closely. By adding a probe, it will create a hybrid protein that emits a yellow color under a blue laser. This hybrid protein is known as a fluorescentâtagged protein, meaning that the protein itself will function and fold normally but it will be tagged with a yellow fluorescent probe (YFP) at the end. This allows the scientists to follow the protein through the cell cycle. They find that the stgn protein normally binds to centromeres in normal cells. After looking at cells at various stages of the cell cycle, they find that compared to normal cells, the breast cancer cells that express the Starkagaren Disease display abnormal nuclei, some appear very large, some have tiny nuclei, and some cells do not have a nucleus at all.

a) Because the STGN protein binds to the centromere, the scientists can also study what other structure?

b) After looking the defects of the affected cells, where in the cell cycle would you guess the error occurs? What do you think happens?

c) The stgn gene appears to not be functioning, do you think the scientists are able to see the STGN protein at the centromeres? Why?

d) The scientists want to see what would happen if they could block the stgn gene from being made in normal cells or lung cancer cells, what is one way they could do this?