HI I get my results tomorrow from my biopsy for breast lump. I am wondering is it routine if they send me for a CT and if they do why ,? Having a panic thinking the worse.
I am sorry to hear about the investigations you have needed and I can appreciate the worry you are feeling. I am afraid I do not know why you are being sent for a CT scan, this can only be explained by the breast team you are under. I wonder if there is anyone from this team you could ask?
Having the CT scan does not mean you necessarily have cancer but I realise not knowing why you need to have it is a worry so do try to find out.
Try not to worry, you were probably sent for a CT scan because you have a lump in your breast. I've been a cancer patient for a few years now and there processes are a bit like painting by numbers. If you present with symptoms X and Y, you get sent for Test A and Scan B regardless of what a clinician may or may not think you have.
My own consultant says he rarely if ever looks at individual test results until the patient is in his clinic and he can look at all the diagnostic information together a get a full picture of what's going on.
Clinical workflow processes sound (and are) pretty inhuman and impersonal but they are a tool to ensure consistently accurate diagnoses when dealing with massive volumes of patients. Gone are the days when a medic might think "I think Mrs Bloggs might have this disease, so I'll send her for this special test". It's more a case of a computerised decision tree "if patient has this set of symptoms, send them for this set of tests and scans even if they probably don't need 90% of them, so we can eliminate most possible diahnoses, narrow it down and do yet more tests and scans until we know just what we are dealing with"
I hope this helps - good luck with your results ... I get mine next week so fingers crossed!
