COMPREHENSIVE BREAST HEALTH SERVICES
If you or a loved one is fighting breast cancer, you know you could be in the fight of your life. You want everyone in your corner … family, friends, and the skilled and compassionate staff, surgeons, and physicians of Albemarle Health.
Statistics indicate one in eight women will be affected by breast cancer in her lifetime. Early detection is the key to a successful battle against the disease. Women should begin breast self exams in their 20s, and begin clinical breast exams (manual and visual exam performed by a healthcare professional) in their 20s and 30s.
Self breast exams and clinical breast exams are only the beginning in the detection and treatment of breast cancer. Women in northeastern North Carolina also have the benefit of Albemarle Health’s sophisticated technology and highly trained healthcare professionals to help in the fight against this terrible disease.
Albemarle Health’s wide range of breast health services include:
• digital mammography
• breast ultrasound
• bilateral breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
• breast specific gamma imaging (BSGI)
• stereotactic breast biopsy
• breast surgery
• reconstruction surgery
• medical oncology
• radiation oncology
If a suspicious lump is detected in early exams, your physician will begin the search for more information by referring you for a digital mammogram at Albemarle Hospital or Regional Medical Center, in Kitty Hawk. Digital mammography, like traditional mammography, uses compression and X-rays to create images of breast tissue. However, since this new technology is completely digital it offers several advantages, including: near immediate production of images, which allows a technician to make sure they are clear before the patient leaves; the ability to store, transmit, and copy information via computers; and the ability of radiologists to adjust brightness, change contrast, magnify images, and easily manipulate specific areas of the image for better diagnosis. Digital mammography is used exclusively at Albemarle Health, and has shown to be especially effective in women less than 50 years of age, women with dense breasts, and pre-menopausal women.
In addition to digital mammography, Albemarle Health physicians can also use breast ultrasound and breast MRI for diagnostic information. Breast ultrasound uses high-frequency sound waves instead of radiation to create images; making it a no risk/no side effect imaging technique. It is most useful for examining fibrocystic or dense breasts; helping find the cause of pain, redness, or swelling in the breasts; determining if breast lumps found on self or clinical breast exams are fluid-filled or solid (a lump filled with fluid indicates a cyst whereas a solid lump indicates a tumor); monitoring cysts for changes; and guiding the needle used during some biopsies and when a cyst needs to be drained.
A breast MRI is another non-invasive tool physicians can use, in conjunction with digital mammography, to help identify breast cancer. It offers several benefits, including giving physicians the ability to better evaluate abnormalities found in digital mammography; identify breast cancer earlier in women with dense breasts and those at higher risk for developing breast cancer; and determining if an abnormality appears benign or malignant. Breast MRI can also be helpful in providing better images of dense breasts in younger women, women with implants, and in staging (or determining how severe the disease may be) breast cancer. An IV contrast will be used in the procedure; be sure to report any history of contrast dye allergies to your physician and the radiologist when they ask prior to the test.
Breast Specific Gamma Imaging (BSGI) is one of the latest technologies available in the fight against breast cancer, and Albemarle Hospital is one of only a handful of hospitals in North Carolina offering this state of the art imaging tool. Breast Specific Gamma Imaging is typically used as an additional breast imaging resource following mammography. It begins with the injection of a small amount of harmless radioactive tracer, which is absorbed by all the body’s cells, being injected into the patient. Because cancerous cells have a higher rate of metabolic activity than normal cells, they absorb a greater amount of the tracer, and appear as “dark spots” or “hot spots” on the resulting images taken with the BSGI machine. Clinical studies have shown BSGI to not only help find and better define breast cancer, but also increase the chance of finding even tiny lesions.
“Radiologists use a variety of imaging techniques to gather images and diagnose diseases such as breast cancer,” said Annapurna Rao, M.D., a radiologist with Coastal Carolina Radiology, at Albemarle Hospital. “We depend on the tools available to us. At Albemarle Health we have so many valuable tools to help us see differences in tissue, determine the makeup of masses, and provide more definitive results to physicians and their patients. If we need to see something from another view, or get an entirely different look with a different type of test, we have that capability.”
Albemarle Health also offers stereotactic breast biopsy when physicians want to examine tissue samples. Stereotactic breast biopsy use images obtained in a mammogram to precisely pinpoint the location of the tissue to be biopsied (extracted with a needle). The biopsied tissue sample is then examined by a pathologist, who will determine if the tissue is benign (not cancerous), pre-malignant (abnormal tissue cells that are not cancerous, but have the potential to change and become cancerous) or malignant (cancerous). Stereotactic breast biopsy is now available at both Albemarle Hospital, where it was recently accredited through the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Radiology, and Regional Medical Center.
If you’re diagnosed with breast cancer, and surgery becomes necessary, Albemarle Hospital offers you the surgical options you need. Whether it’s an excisional biopsy, lumpectomy, or partial (segmental) or full mastectomy, our surgeons have the experience and skill you want on your side.
An excisional biopsy is a surgical procedure that removes a suspicious area – or an entire lump – in the breast. A lumpectomy is surgery to remove abnormal or cancerous tissue in the breast, and a small amount of tissue around it, in order to save the breast. A partial mastectomy is the removal of breast cancer tissue, as well as some of the tissue around the tumor and some of the lining of the chest muscles below the tumor. A full mastectomy is the removal of all breast tissue in order to eliminate cancer. Surgeons at Albemarle Hospital also perform sentinel node biopsies, which help evaluate the spread of the breast cancer and may save a patient from unwanted surgical side effects such as arm swelling.
“Breast cancer can be a particularly devastating disease,” said Antonio Ruiz, M.D., a surgeon with Carolina Surgical Care, in Elizabeth City, and a member of the American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBS). “It’s important to have as many resources available for the patient as possible, from detection to treatment. We have the ability to perform a variety of surgical procedures, from simple biopsies, to more involved surgeries such as partial and full mastectomies. We can provide our patients with the resources they need to fight breast cancer, every step of the way, right here at home.”
Women who have a mastectomy may choose to have reconstructive breast surgery. During reconstruction, a plastic surgeon rebuilds the breast to be nearly identical in size and shape to the breast that was removed. At Albemarle Hospital, women can have reconstruction at the same time as their mastectomy – there is no second time under anesthesia, and only one recovery period.
“Breast reconstruction is a very personal decision,” said Jeffrey Pokorny, M.D., a plastic and reconstructive surgeon with Carolina Coastal Plastic Surgery. “Because the breast surgeons at Albemarle Hospital and I understand the complexities of both mastectomy and the choice to rebuild the breast, we are able to work together to accomplish both in one surgery. While we are saving their life by removing the cancer, we can also rebuild their body, and help them keep their self esteem in tact.”
Albemarle Health’s breast health services also include medical oncology, provided by the physicians of Virginia Oncology Associates in Elizabeth City and at Regional Medical Center, and radiation oncology available at the Albemarle Health Regional Oncology Center, located on the campus of Albemarle Hospital.
If you have a family history of breast cancer, have questions about breast cancer, or have recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, ask your physician if the breast health services at Albemarle Health can help you. This is one fight you won’t have to go through alone.
