One in eight women in the UK will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and like most cancers, the sooner it can be detected, the better the patient's prospects. That's why there's a national screening programme for women over fifty. which has been successful at cutting the mortality rate.
But it's a one size fits all solution at a time where medicine is getting more personalised. Some breast tissue is denser than others, and the denser it is, the more likely it is to develop a cancer, and the more aggressive that cancer is likely to be. So anything that can help differentiate fom person to person what's going on, early on, will improve how effectively we can treat cancer.
Being able to use dye to help imaging is one of those ways, and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust was one of the first hospitals to be able to to carry out contrast mammograms using dye. That expertise has meant we're part of the BRAID trial the acronym in this case stands for Breast Screening – Risk Adaptive Imaging for Density and means we can offer it at early stage in the process.
Dr Elisabetta Giannotti, a consultant breast radiologist, is leading the trial at Nottingham.
More information on the the BRAID study website: https://radiology.medschl.cam.ac.uk/research/research-themes/breast-imaging/braid-trial/
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