The technology is only now available at a few medical centers, but Snyderman predicts that it will be here to stay, and should be available to the average woman in the future. In a study at Johns Hopkins University, researchers tested the scope's ability to spot breast abnormalities in 55 women who had already had biopsies that showed either cancer or pre-cancerous changes and were scheduled for a lumpectomy, a surgery to remove the breast tumor and a small amount of surrounding normal tissue. Ductoscopy found abnormal growths in 75 percent of the women. In 38 percent of the women, the scope revealed cancer had spread further than other diagnostic techniques had shown. That information prompted surgeons to remove some more tissue.
Surgeons can generally only estimate how much to remove.
Subsequent tests showed that no cancer cells remained in any of the margins around the removed tumors. A similar procedure called duct lavage involves flushing the ducts to dislodge cells by injecting saline solution through the nipples and drawing it back out again. In another Johns Hopkins study, the duct lavage detected abnormalities in the breast fluid of 17 out of 20 women with confirmed invasive breast cancer. In a group of 45 healthy women, there were five false positives. And two women with normal mammograms whose duct fluid tested positive were subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer.