It takes a confirmed bachelor to suggest something like this

Published: November 11, 2008 at 12:53am

What exactly is Arnold talking about here? Let’s see now. Tuesday morning: the mobile breast-screening unit goes down to Borg and Jones Insurance Agency and parks outside. The manager calls all the women aged 40+ and tells them they can take an early lunch-break and go down and get themselves checked. Meanwhile, all the men nudge each other and crack jokes. Come off it, Arnold.

The Times, Monday, November 10, 2008

Breast screening at the workplace

Alternattiva Demokratika has suggested the introduction of mobile breast-screening units at the workplace.

As part of the breast care awareness campaign, AD chairman Arnold Cassola met representatives of the Breast Care Support Group. Prof. Cassola said breast cancer is a reality that is taking the lives of women of all ages. More awareness campaigns therefore need to be organised and the process of launching public breast-screening services had to be speeded up. Support group president Gertrude Abela pointed out that 10 per cent of all women develop lumps at one stage or another in life. Also, breast cancer rates are rapidly increasing, with about 10 new cases every week. Mary Anne Zammit, AD spokesman for health and social protection, said breast care awareness should be extended to all women from every walk of life, targeting mainly those women coming from disadvantaged backgrounds or those living in bad conditions.




19 Comments Comment

  1. Evelyn Grech says:

    Do Maltese women know that radiation from mammogram is 1000 times more than a normal x ray? According to Dr.Mercola, a well known American doctor (Dr.Mercola.com) mammograms can even cause cancer from radiation. Check his website if you think am inventing this!

    [Daphne – Well, I’m quite sure more lives have been saved by mammograms than deaths caused.]

  2. Evelyn Grech says:

    Extract from Dr. Mercola most recent article on Breast Cancer
    “The option that I highly recommend is called THERMOGRAPHY.
    Thermographic breast screening is brilliantly simple. It measures the radiation of infrared heat from the body and translates this information into anatomical images. Your normal blood circulation is under the control of your autonomic nervous system, which governs your body functions. Thermography uses no mechanical pressure or ionizing radiation, and can detect signs of breast cancer years earlier than either Mammography or a physical exam.
    Mammography CANNOT detect a tumour until it has been growing for years and reaches a certain size. THERMOGRAPHY is able to detect the possibility of breast cancer earlier, because it can image the early stages of angiogenesis ( the formation of a direct supply of blood to cancer cells, which is a necessary step before they can grow into tumour size)

    Health Minister please note!

  3. fonze says:

    Always looking for something to carp about, dear Daphne. Breast screening at work happens all over the world. You just don`t seem to know about it. You always have to shoot off and gab even about things you don`t know anything about. Hallina.

    [Daphne – Let me hazard a guess. It happens in those parts of the world where the nearest general hospital complete with breast-screening unit isn’t a 15-minute drive away for everyone who lives in the country. And now another guess: it happens in those parts of the world where the women in the high-risk category are at work, not at home polishing the floor for the nth time and watching soap operas.]

  4. Mark Vella says:

    They might be talking about this…http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/91/4/584.pdf

    Worksites represent an important venue
    for such programs, because they provide access
    to large numbers of women and a setting
    in which interventions may be offered
    repeatedly over time. An additional advantage
    to the worksite setting is the opportunity
    to collaborate with labor unions, which
    frequently represent women in lower-paying
    jobs. Unions afford access to this population,
    lend credibility to worksite programs, and
    offer an organizational structure through
    which programs may be institutionalized.

    [Daphne – Read my response to Fonze. There isn’t a single workplace in Malta which has even a few women over 40, let alone large numbers of them. Open your eyes next time you visit a Maltese workplace, and notice how the women there can more accurately be described as girls. The high-risk women are all at home. But of course, deep-thinking AD wouldn’t have taken that into consideration – unless, of course, he means taking the mobile unit to the sorijiet tal-klawzura, who really are a high-risk category, or to weekend tombola parties.]

  5. Kenneth Cassar says:

    Re: Breast-screening at the workplace

    Well intentioned proposal, but wouldn’t work for the reason Daphne mentioned.

  6. Zizzu says:

    I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that this Dr Mercola is trying to patent/has patented an alternative technology/technique to screen breasts …

  7. Kenneth Cassar says:

    Re: http://www.ajph.org/cgi/reprint/91/4/584.pdf

    I went to check the link, and just as I suspected, the article is from the US where many high-risk women can’t even afford health-care, let alone have it free of charge.

    In the context of the US, it makes much sense to have screening programs on the work-place (and involving labour unions). The situation in Malta is very different.

  8. Moggy says:

    In response to Evelyn Grech, an excerpt about breast thermography provided by the Mayo Clinic, including an opinion by the American Cancer Society:

    “However, there is no evidence that breast thermography is an effective screening tool for early detection of breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

    Breast thermography is a way of detecting differences in skin temperature on the surface of the breast with the use of a special heat-sensing (infrared) camera. It is based on the theory that surface temperature increases in areas of increased blood flow and metabolism, such as in a tumor. Breast thermography is noninvasive and uses no radiation.

    This technology is most effective in detecting tumors that are close to the skin surface but not tumors deeper in the breast. Also, breast thermography is not sensitive enough to detect small cancers.

    Breast thermography is not routinely used for breast cancer detection and should not be used instead of mammograms. Scientists continue to investigate the usefulness of thermography in detecting breast cancer.”

    http://www.riversideonline.com/health_reference/Womens-Health/AN01410.cfm

    http://www.valleyhealth.com/Health_Library/Article.asp?content_id=727&PID=

    One hopes that Ms. Grech will henceforth consult reputable web-sites about the subject of cancer detection. Scare-mongering is silly and irresponsible.

  9. Zizzu says:

    Evelyn Grech’s second post wasn’t “published” yet when I posted mine, but there you go … Dr Mercola’s backing THERMOGRAPHY. I wonder whose lab developed it …

  10. Zizzu says:

    @ Moggy

    I’m sure you’ve seen this thing millions of times over… A group of researchers rubbishing a technique/instrument only to propose a better alternative a few weeks/months later.

    Of course, the public’s gullibility and the press’s general “ignorance” help them no end …

  11. Graham C. says:

    I heard breast cancer is caused by applying antiperspirants.

  12. Moggy says:

    @ Zizzu:

    Exactly. If you carry out a Google search for “safety of mammograms” you will find out that Ms. Grech got her information from a few “natural health” sites, including Dr. Mercola’s. Many people are taking this “natural health” business too far. When it comes to serious conditions, the natural way will not take one far – unless, that is, one chooses to let nature take its course, resulting in an inevitable, “natural” death.

  13. Christian Scerri says:

    Please,Please – the internet is a good tool but the amount of rubbish one finds published is unbelievable.

    The Dr Mercola site has to be taken with more than a pinch of salt (more likely a tablespoonful).

    The only scientifically proven screening technology for breast cancer is mammography, with either two radiologists examining the x-ray pictures or else on radiologist utilising a computer aided identification software.

    The actual radiation dose is very low, but due to the fact that the x-rays are of the low energy type, their potential risk per dose is higher than normal x-rays (by around a factor of 2). This, and the fact that the risk of breast cancer is higher in postmenopausal women, are the reasons why breast cancer screening by mammography is recommended to be initiated after the age of 50 years or so, with mammograms taken once every 2 to 3 years. Such a routine examinations have a minor if any increase risk of breast cancer.

  14. DF says:

    If the issue here is that there aren’t ENOUGH Maltese working women in the high-risk category to justify introducing the AD proposal, how does Cassola being a ‘confirmed bachelor’ come into the equation?

    [Daphne – There are two issues: even if there were enough high-risk-category women in the workplace, which is not the case, it still would not work because it places women in an embarrassing position. How would men feel if they were asked to pop along in their lunch-break for a prostate-cancer check at the mobile unit waiting outside the office (if there were such a thing)? Just because you’ve got breasts it doesn’t mean you have to be treated like a cow. If married men and run-around-Joes don’t know how women think, just imagine how much less confirmed bachelors know.]

  15. Zizzu says:

    I don’t think you can compare a rectal exam with a mammogram. The hangups associated with either body part are entirely different.

    [Daphne – How would you know about that, not being a woman? Oh I forget, don’t just tell women what they should do, they also tell them how they should feel.]

  16. Tim Ripard says:

    This man couldn’t care less about what others may think about his popping out to a prostate-check in his lunch or any other break. Why should I feel any embarrassment about a medical procedure undergone solely for my benefit? I’m not telling you how a woman should feel but I feel I can tell you how a woman shouldn’t feel, if you follow, and that is: she shouldn’t feel embarrassed. Honi soit qui mal y pense is my opinion.

    What’s so embarrassing about having your boobs checked? It’s not like it’s going to be video-taped and posted on YouTube. Your cow remark is also out of line – nobody’s going to milk you is she?

    I would have thought that in your mid forties and after having had three children you’d show more maturity in this case.

    Arnoldino’s idea is pretty batty, I agree, but for logistical reasons – a mobile breast-screening clinic would cost a fortune and doesn’t make economical sense when the fixed clinic can be reached with (relative) ease.

    [Daphne – No, Tim – the idea is batty because women don’t like having their privacy invaded. We are FORCED to have our privacy invaded – how many men have lain there legs akimbo up in the air with a baby popping out when 10 medical students crowd into the room for a live demonstration, and doctors, nurses and orderlies come and go? – but we don’t like it. This may come as a surprise to you, but most women consider these things to be a private matter, and they’re damned if they’re going to let the entire office know when they’re taking a mammogram. Besides, do you know that you get the result there and then? What happens to the woman who gets bad news? Does she walk back into the office and get back to work, taking care to show no emotion? Does she make an attention-getting scene? Does she ask for the afternoon off so that the rest of the office knows she’s had bad news? Do the women who get the all-clear come back smiling with their thumbs up? It’s precisely because I DO take a mature approach, having been through it myself, and not being an insensitive man, that I know how terrible those frozen minutes are for a woman when the radiologist is going over her scans and pauses for just that fraction of a second. Yes, that’s really the kind of thing you need to deal with in the middle of a working day, with all your colleagues snooping and a desk piled high waiting. Have you ever wondered why so many women prefer to have a girlfriend, their mother or their sister with them during this ordeal, rather than some wise-cracking man?]

  17. Christian Scerri says:

    Daphne, from my professional point of view I would tend to agree with you in the way of how patients feel when being examined – in fact back in my medical student days, a whole year was dedicated to bed side manners – basically just to make the patient feel comfortable.

    On the other hand, mammogramm results should not be given there and then – they take time to examine and as I said earlier, it is recommended that at least two radiologist view to image – it can be very subjective – this is at least what was recently presented by Dr Salvina Zrinzo during a breast cancer symposium held a couple of weeks ago.

    [Daphne – Dr Zrinzo checked mine without suggesting that they be checked by somebody else, and gave me the result there and then.]

  18. Chris II says:

    It might be that she (Dr Zrinzo) was using a computer-aided diagnostic device that basically pre-scans the image and points to possible areas (this was also mentioned by her during the same symposium). This is not available at Mater Dei but might be available in some private clinic.

    [Daphne – I don’t know what she used, but it was at a private clinic.]

  19. Tim Ripard says:

    Daphne, maybe it’s because I’m living in a different culture now (here nude – mixed – public saunas are the norm, communal – segregated – showers are also the norm in sports clubs, topless bathing is common and public nudist bathing areas are freely available and there’s little or no coyness or embarrassment about nudism anywhere, as long as you opt for it freely), and maybe it’s because of my male upbringing (5 brothers, no sisters) but I’m still not persuaded per se. I do however see your point, though to me it’s overstated.

    Your questions are somewhat rhetorical and rather unfair. Of course no man can can demonstrate giving birth to an audience and no woman should be FORCED to either. It’s the forcing that is wrong and I think you basically agree with me here, having written the word in capitals. Women should be asked politely and without any undue pressure if they would CONSENT to giving a demonstration and the CHOICE should be theirs. As an aside, let me mention that I booked my last (and first) prostate check with a male urologist but when I went for the appointment the guy was caught up with an emergency and his female partner was acting in locum. She offered me the option to make an appointment with the man or go ahead with her. The fact that I opted for the latter is irrelevant. Her sensitive offer is what’s important here – and that’s the way it should be. Do I know you get the result there and then? No, I don’t. (Of the three women I know well who had mammograms, two were given an immediate all-clear and one was was told of the need for further investigation which subsequently proved negative.) Your point? The hard truth is that shit happens and we deal with it. Fortunately, shit doesn’t happen all that often (and in the medical sense it happens far more frequently to men, you know, but we tend to deal with better). In another part of your blog you informed us about how easy it was for a woman to deal with the lewd pawings of (depraved) men invading their privacy. You seem to have changed your tune now. Now a common medical procedure has become an ‘ordeal’. Again, you shouldn’t have colleagues snooping – they should be sensitive – and that’s where the real problem is. On that, I think we can agree.

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