DIY breast lump examination gadget

The breastlight is a medical gadget that allows women to examine suspicious breast lumps.

Malignant lumps have an increased blood supply to feed them so any dense areas may indicate an abnormality. Fluid filled cysts, however, will not absorb the light.

I don't think they are sold in the US, but in the UK they cost £77.50.

Breastlight Helps Augment At-Home Self Exams

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Brainspore

@ bklynchris #22:

Anyone? What is the average age of your male reader here on Boing Boing. OK, I get the first couple of headlight jokes, but more than a couple? C’mon, if you are going to be insulting could you at least be a little more imaginative?

Sure boobie jokes are immature, that’s the nature of the internets. But insulting? That’s just not fair. If snickering about breast-related topics is insulting to women, you should see what happens when someone brings up penises.

P.S. The immature “headlights” joke that Anonymous made at #8 wasn’t yet visible when I made my immature “headlights” joke at #15.
Jamie Sue

Who wants to check for cancer? I just want to check stripper-tits for authenticity.
sluggo

“Turn on your Breastlight! Let it shine wherever you go!”

Does this validate?
Brainspore

Check out those headlights.
jwb

#10: does mammography improve outcomes? There was recently an article in the popular press (NY Times etc) regarding how prostate screening apparently has a negative impact on outcomes due to the detection and needless treatment of otherwise benign … prostate stuff. Don’t remember the details but I do remember being glad that people study the efficacy of these screens.
pshaffer

I am a breast radiologist, and I think it is important for me to post some scientific information regarding this device for everyone here.

You might ask: â€œthis is so simple, why hasnâ€™t someone tried it before?â€
The answer is we have. There were a flurry of research articles from the 1980â€™s and early nineties that compared this method to Mammography. Light scanning (also known as diaphanography) always lost, usually by big numbers. It missed many tumors that were visible with mammography, but worse did not find any that mammography missed.

More recently, the technique has been modified from simply shining a light to spectral analysis and to analysis of the change of transmission through an area as compression changes. These havenâ€™t worked well either.

Incidentally, thermography (as reference above) is useless, and a business that was scaring women about cancer and was selling scans, was recently put out of business by the govt and is being sued to return fees collected. Not sure what 3D imaging he is referring to above. Also useless is breast impedance imaging.

There is a law of natural selection here, if a method really works, those people who work with these things every day and whose mission in life it is to find new ways to diagnose and cure breast cancer will have been looking at it well before a website advertises it for sale to the public. Any website that is advertising should have a wealth of information available to it to use to promote a truly efficacious product. This one has no reference to scientific studies of effectiveness, a very easy thing to direct potential customers to in the internet age, if such proof actually exists.

This device is so worthless, that the company should be sued for false advertising, but it seems that there is a protected class of advertisers, to include dietary supplements, who can make any claims without regard to actually being useful. Unfortunately, they can sell these products by

Here is a selection from 12 articles found with pubmed. Com (search: (transillumination OR diaphanography) AND breast. Limit to journals Radiology and AJR. Most of these articles are a free download.
Note that there are none after about 1993. The method was recognized to be useless as compared to other methods available.

Radiology. 1987 May;163(2):463-5.

Sens 58% vs 88% for Mammo

he authors conclude that transillumination light scanning is not competitive with mammography as a screening method for breast cancer detection. furthermore, they were unable to identify a select subpopulation of women who might benefit from light scanning as an adjunct to mammography.

AJR Am J Roentgenol. 1985 Mar;144(3):619-22

Detection of breast cancer by light scanning was affected by breast size, but not architecture, and was directly related to tumor size. Although transillumination light scanning can detect some small curable breast cancers (smaller than 1 cm), it does not do so at a sensitivity adequate for screening.

AJR Am J Roentgenol. 1984 Apr;142(4):841-4.

This prospective study of 1239 women compares the breast cancer detecting abilities of state-of-the-art mammography and transillumination. Mammography was found to be the superior technique, detecting 80 (96%) of the 83 pathologically proven cancers, while transillumination detected only 44 (53%). Among cancers having the best prognosis, transillumination was even less accurate relative to mammography, detecting only 43% of malignancies that had not yet spread to axillary lymph nodes and only 19% of the nonpalpable cancers and cancers smaller than 1 cm, whereas mammography detected over 90% in each of these categories. None of the three cancers missed by mammography were detected by transillumination. Clearly, transillumination is not an acceptable substitute for mammography in the detection and diagnosis of breast cancer. Therefore, the current commercial promotion of transillumination seems to be premature.

AJR Am J Roentgenol. 1984 Sep;143(3):465-8.
dbarak

Call me… Inspector Gadget.
apoxia

#9 Lobster

#11 is correct. There was a large scale study done with thousands of Chinese women involving training on BSE and long-term follow-up. Lots and lots of false positives, and the death rates from breast cancer between exam and no-exam groups were not different. Thus, a lot of increased health costs, worry and anxiety with no observable gain. Of course, at an individual level a person may wish to perform BSE and many lumps have been found this way. On a population basis it may not make much sense to educate the public on the matter.

The company selling this self scanning device have information regarding a true positive hit rate of 82%. They don’t report on the false positive rate. This is important if we are to understand the number of people who get a positive result and yet do not have a lump.
apoxia

One more thing. The data listed is prefaced with “Published trials on Breastlight, using an earlier device”. The articles are dated 1929, 1982, 1985, 1995 and did not use the current Breastlight that is being sold. This raises a few red flags for me.
tuktuk

proof once again that x-ray glasses would be grosser than one might suspect
Anonymous

From the homepage:

Over 80% of women have told us they feel more confident when using Breastlight as part of their breast awareness routine.

They expect us to believe over 80% of women have even tried the product let alone the rest of that statement.
May be a great product, I don’t know, but blatant over the top lying on their homepage is not the way to gain credibility (or a sale)!
bklynchris

Anyone? What is the average age of your male reader here on Boing Boing. OK, I get the first couple of headlight jokes, but more than a couple? C’mon, if you are going to be insulting could you at least be a little more imaginative?
Antinous / Moderator

Cue the “ZOMG NSFW!” comments in 3 – 2 – 1.
EyeSpy Guy

One of the issues with Self Breast Examination (SBE) is that by the time a cancerous tumor is large enough to be detected by touch it is no longer early stage cancer, and is hard to treat.

Other diagnosis methods (thermal imaging, mammograms, stereo-imaging 3-D maps) are much better at early detection and thus tend to lead to more timely treatment.

This device might be interesting if it is a more effective alternative to SBE. Just because it is less effective than a professional diagnosis does not mean it is without value. Frankly anything that works better than SBE (which is effectively useless) is a good thing.
Anonymous

Does this strike anyone else as an overpriced flashlight? Ever stuck the lit end of a maglight in your mouth? Yeah.
machinelf

Looks like a repackaged egg candler.
knodi

Ooooh, boobies. Who’s the model? That’s a sexy distribution of vessels, the way they’re all black and bifurcated. And the way the nipple is so…. present! Whoof!

http://people.clarkson.edu/~fbailey/lf390/avery_wolf.gif
Steve Schnier

I’d be concerned that someone would use this product, misdiagnose themselves and not seek proper medical treatment.
Anonymous

I’m going to have to echo Steve Schnier on this one, this is no substitute for a proper medical diagnosis.
febryle

As a medical professional, this type of device scares the crap out of me. There is a home otoscope on the market (here in the US) that allows nervous parents to look in their kids ears to diagnose ear infections. Also very scary to me.

Option 1) Patient finds lump, device tells them it’s fine, patient defers seeking medical treatment for malignant tumor.

Option 2) Patient finds lump, device tells them it’s not fine, patient rushes to see doctor, doctor tells patient it’s fibrous tissue/cyst etc, much anxiety ensues.

Or, of course, the device is perfectly accurate at identifying malignant tumors without requiring mammogram, ultrasound, or biopsy, in which case we should all invest in the company’s stock now.

Bottom line–lumps require further imaging (mammogram, ultrasound) and examination by an experienced physician. I don’t see a device like this doing anything but complicating an already anxiety-provoking situation.
Anonymous

“Your headlights are on…”

DIY glow boobies.
Itsumishi

May be a great product, I don’t know, but blatant over the top lying on their homepage is not the way to gain credibility (or a sale)!

Way to gain credibility, probably not.
Way to gain sales, I’d argue that over the top lies have worked pretty darn efficiently in a whole lot of advertising for many many years.
frankieboy

The info makes it clear this is not a substitute for treatment, and urges a visit to the doctor if one detects an abnormality. If a woman has a family history or cancer, or a past experience, this could be a very useful tool, seems to me.
And with more people not going to doctors as regularly as might be best, what with the cost or lack of insurance, this might be a good way to do a more thorough self exam.
Lobster

#6 is right. Women should also stop doing manual self-exams too, since they can’t tell with 100% accuracy if a lump is a tumor.
Brainspore

OH SHIT, CANCER!

No, wait, sorry. Just a nipple.
febryle

Actually, Lobster, manual self-exams have never been shown to improve diagnosis or detection of breast malignancies. BSE leads to excessive workups for false positives and does not improve outcomes. It is actually quite controversial whether it should even be taught at all. The ACOG recommends it be taught, but the Advisory Committee on Cancer Prevention in the European Union and Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care recommend against it. US Preventive Services Task Force found insufficient evidence to recommend for or against the procedure. In 2003, the American Cancer Society changed its previous recommendation in favor of monthly BSE to a recommendation that women be educated about the benefits and limitations of BSE.

But my point wasn’t that women shouldn’t do BSE, it’s that if just one malignant tumor is missed because of the use of this device, that will be one too many.