What is tactile breast screening? 

When 42-year-old Manisha Anand got a call for a tactile breast screening to be done by a trained visually impaired woman, she called up her mother, a gynaecologist, consulted her, and signed up for the examination programme. Anand, who has a family history of breast cancer, eventually had her first tactile breast screening in June this year.
 

“I have always been doing self-breast examinations (SBE) due to my family history that puts me at credible risk. When I came to know about the screening, I was initially skeptical but once I was there, with the trainers who were visually-impaired, I realised it is a safe, more private and unique method of doing a screening,” she said.

Now, she recommends the cost-free non-invasive preventive check-ups to all her friends and family. As a technique that uses the highly developed sensory skills of visually-impaired women for manual breast health screening called Medical Tactile Examiners (MTEs) who use strips of tape called ‘docos’ marked with Braille coordinates, the technique, originally introduced in Germany about 10 years ago, has been gaining traction in India ever since its launch here.
 

Such has been the rise that over the last four months, MTEs have been able to detect pre-cancerous or cancerous lesions in around 17 women. Their findings were affirmed medically by radiological tests, according to a validation study started by the CK Birla Hospital for Women (CKBHfW), Gurugram and National Association for the Blind (NAB) India in March 2019, with support from Bayer Crops Science Group in India in collaboration with Discovering Hands, Germany.

As per the study, more than 500 random women from Gurugram and other parts of Delhi NCR underwent TBE; along with breast ultrasound for those less than 40 years and mammogram for those more than 40 years of age.
According to the study results, the initial trends suggested “very high level of sensitivity for detecting breast lesions”. “Changes were detected in 30 per cent women, 40 per cent of which were confirmed by radiology and 20 per cent had cancerous or pre-cancerous changes. Majority of them were still at stage I and stage II. Overall 3.5 per cent of women were detected with lesions that could have affected them adversely,” the study read.
Source: https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/health/tactile-breast-screening-visually-impaired-blind-show-promise-early-detection-of-breast-cancer-india-women-empowerment-disability-5932948/