
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 30, 1994                   TAG: 9411300062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Short

BREAST CANCER FOUND IN NEW WAY

A radioactive tracer injected into women who may have breast cancer makes malignancies ``light up'' on a detector and could cut in half the number of biopsies needed in this country, a researcher said Tuesday.

If the technique is proved effective, it could save millions of dollars and spare hundreds of thousands of women the pain and scarring that can accompany biopsies, said the researcher, Dr. Iraj Khalkhali, an associate professor of radiology at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The technique was 90 percent accurate in identifying breast cancer in women who were afflicted, Khalkhali and colleagues reported at a meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.

Khalkhali cautioned that the method is still experimental.

The new technique, called scintimammography, costs about $600 and employs a radioactive tracer first used to detect heart disease. The patient is exposed to about the same amount of radiation she would receive on a cross-country airplane trip.

Biopsies typically cost $1,500 to $3,000. About 700,000 a year are done to evaluate breast lumps. The new technique has the potential to eliminate the need for half of them, Khalkhali estimated.

``We can no longer afford to do a biopsy on every suspicious finding seen on mammography,'' Khalkhali said.

The researcher said the equipment needed is already in virtually every hospital's radiology department.

by CNB