10 / 24
10 ARCHBOLD
MEDICAL CENTER
Three
women.
Three perspectives.
3D™ MAMMOGRAPHY COMES TO THOMASVILLE
THIS SUMMER,
as a result of a
successful community fundraising effort,
patients at the Archbold Women’s Center
gained access to new medical technol-
ogy that they would have previously
had to travel more than 50 miles to take
advantage of.
3D™ mammography—the most
advanced technology available for breast
cancer detection—made its debut in
Thomasville in July. And it’s already help-
ing physicians detect breast cancer in
the very earliest stages of the disease.
Breast cancer, the most common can-
cer after skin cancer diagnosed nation-
ally in women, is also one of the most
common cancers treated at Archbold’s
Singletary Oncology Center every year.
And with statistics showing that 1 in 8
women is diagnosed with breast cancer
at one point in her lifetime, it’s safe to say
that almost everyone has been affected
in some way by the disease—whether
through personal experience or that of a
family member or friend.
Sisters in solidarity
Breast cancer survivor Debbie Beeson,
who also serves as the Breast Cancer
Navigator at Archbold’s Singletary
Oncology Center, is thrilled that patients
now have access to the state-of-the-art
diagnostic tool that wasn’t available
when she was diagnosed with breast
cancer in May 2006.
“The unknown is what created the
most fear for me when I learned my
diagnosis,” said Beeson. “The technology
available at the time made determining
the size of the tumor difficult. 3D™ mam-
mography would have probably given
doctors a more accurate picture of what
was going on from the beginning, which
would have given me and my family
peace of mind as we were discussing
treatment options.”
What does the 3rddimensionmean?
Archbold physicians say the 3D™ mam-
mography technology is the latest and
greatest tool to detect breast cancer.
An x-ray-like machine takes a series of
pictures in seconds that are converted
into thinly sliced images of the breast
from multiple different angles.
“The technology produces an unprec-
edented view of the breasts from mul-
tiple angles,” said Archbold radiologist
Mary Ann Bullard Grayson, MD. “It allows
us to examine the tissue layer by layer,
similar to how you would flip pages in
a book, to see what’s inside. Fine details
are more visible with this technology.
Even very small lesions are able to be
detected and analyzed, because they are
less likely hidden by overlapping tissue.”
“3D™ mammography has already con-
tributed greatly to an increased rate of
breast cancer detection at the Archbold
Women’s Center,” said Dr. Grayson. “As a
woman, a radiologist and your neighbor
I strongly encourage women to take
advantage of this new breast cancer
screening technology.”
Rhonda Whitfield was one of the first
patients to have a 3D™ mammogram at
At a glance
The new technology now available
at Archbold Women’s Center:
•
Improves the ability of doctors to
accurately diagnose breast cancer.
•
Helps find tumors that may
have remained hidden on a 2-D
mammogram alone.
•
Greatly reduces the number of
women called back for false alarms.