Critics detect hype in “Bra Detects Breast Cancer” news

From the 19 October 2012 article at HealthNewsReview.org

We asked two people at the National Breast Cancer Coalition to react to the announcement.  Annette Bar-Cohen wrote us:

“The discovery of breast changes earlier and earlier in the process needs to go along with our ability to translate that into knowledge that will actually be lifesaving.  Otherwise we will see an increase in incidence, an additional rise in overdiagnosis and overtreatment, and perhaps no reduction in mortality – no additional lives saved. So a recognition of the role of this technology in the early detection field would be good.”

Laura Nikolaides of NBCC responded:

“I am intrigued by the idea – we are always interested in any new ideas = but have found this reporting (note: she was specifically referring to the Boston Globe and CBS pieces) incredibly frustrating.  More questions are raised than are answered.  The details provided aren’t even consistent.  One report implies that a woman would wear the bra over time, on an ongoing basis, the other report claims it would be a one time thing.  Neither report says that in fact, a woman would need to have several sensors or patches applied to her breast and that the bra itself is the monitor (found this on the parent company website).  Another confusion is the temperature issue – a business report on the company says the technology is actually monitoring 9600 data points of cell metabolism that are then converted to temperature changes.

I was very interested to see the data on the clinical trials, but couldn’t get to it.  I was able to get to the parent company website, which said the trials were conducted at Ohio State, but couldn’t get any more info.   So, bottom line, is that as someone who is very interested in any new ideas on detecting early changes in the breast, I found the reporting on this new idea stunning for the lack of details on what the technology actually is, what it does, how it works, how it was validated, etc.”

Finally, I turned to one of our smart story reviewers on HealthNewsReview.org, Mandy Stahre, PhD, a young survivor of breast cancer having been diagnosed at age 31.  She is a graduate of the National Breast Cancer Coalition’s Project LEAD training and has served as a consumer reviewer for the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program.  She also wrote about the Boston and CBS stories:

“A new bra may be able to detect breast cancer six years before a tumor can be detected by imaging.  Sounds too good to be true.  After further reading we are presented with what sounds like impressive statistics referring to clinical trials with results in the 90% range for sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy. Never mind that details regarding what was actually detected seemed to be omitted.

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