In the hot seat: thermography for breast cancer diagnosis

Abstract

Thermography—a direct method of measuring skin temperature either as discrete values or in the form of a visual image—is ineffective for detecting clinically occult breast cancer and should not be used as an indicator for biopsy. That's the opinion of the American College of Radiology (ACR), as expressed in a strongly worded policy statement issued at the recent Chicago meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Spokesman Gerald D. Dodd, Jr, MD, chair of radiology at M. D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute, Houston, and a former president of the American Thermographic Society (1976 to 1977), said that although thermograms are virtually useless in diagnosing breast cancer in asymptomatic women, many physicians routinely use them for this purpose. A number of women who believe that even reduceddose mammography is unsafe readily accept thermography, which is noninvasive and does not employ ionizing radiation. However, the reality, says the ACR,