How improved 3D breast cancer test can save lives through early diagnosis among Hong Kong patients
- More precise 3D mammograms, which have led to greater detection accuracy, now available at Hong Kong Adventist Hospital – Stubbs Road in Happy Valley
- Hospital also offers enhanced physiotherapy and rehabilitation techniques to help patients tackle side effects such as lymphedema, with swelling to body tissues
At least 11 Hong Kong women are found to have breast cancer every day and one in every 15 women in the city will be diagnosed with the disease during their lifetime.
Cases of the most common type of cancer affecting Hong Kong’s female population have more than tripled over the past quarter century or so – up from 1,152 in 1993 to 4,108 in 2016, according to the Hong Kong Cancer Registry.
The advantages of the new 3D technology over the conventional one are that patients will feel less pain during the scan and the results are much more accurate
Early detection and treatment is essential because about one in four newly discovered cases are already at advanced levels of stages three or four.
Stage three is where the breast cancer has extended to beyond the immediate region of the tumour and may have invaded nearby lymph nodes and muscles, but has not spread to distant organs, while stage four means the cancer has spread to other areas of the body.
The five-year survival rate for women with stage-three breast cancer is 50 per cent, but for stage-four sufferers the five-year survival rate drops to 15 per cent.
