'All-seeing' digital breast screening aids early detection
The Princess Grace Hospital
Mention to friends or family that you are having a 'breast scan' and everyone will immediately fear breast cancer. Yet having your breast X-rayed - known as a mammogram - is as simple as having your teeth examined and just as important in preventing major problems. If you are more than 40 years old, it should be part of a personal routine every year or 18 months.
Early detection of potential problems usually means less radical treatment and better long-term outcomes. That's why the NHS offers free mammograms every three years to women over 50 years of age. But the average age for a first breast check is 52 - and one in five of new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in women under 50 years old. In women aged between 35 and 54 years breast cancer has become the biggest killer, ahead of lung and cervical cancer.
To help save lives and avoid unnecessary anxieties, it's not hard to see why expert consultant surgeons and radiographers at the private Princess Grace Hospital's Comprehensive Breast Care Centre in central London believe that breast screening should be routine for women under 50 and be more frequent than every three years for all women.
Breast cancer is affecting more women than ever before. (See box story on risk factors). But there is good news too, the sooner a cancer can be detected, the more likely it is to be treatable, bringing a dramatic reduction in mortality.
Reassurance & detection
For more than 20 years, The Princess Grace Hospital has provided breast screening, diagnosis, treatment and aftercare services with the reassurance of complete breast care by an expert team. From screening to analysis, breast surgery by specialist consultants, pathology, and radiotherapy, all the necessary services are on hand, supported by experienced breast care nursing & counselling.
A multi-disciplinary specialist care team at the hospital uses the latest, advanced and dedicated equipment. That includes full-field digital mammography, which is particularly suited for examining the dense breast tissue normally found in women under 50 years of age, or those of any age with scar tissue following previous breast surgery.
This digital mammography instantly produces high quality, computerised breast images that can be manipulated and enhanced for the radiologist to interpret in a way that is not possible with film-based conventional mammograms.
The Princess Grace Hospital is one of very few hospitals in the country with this expensive digital mammography equipment and it is the only place where you can get this type of advanced digital screening on-demand. This is why the hospital finds that 95% of women of all ages opt for digital rather than conventional X-rays of their breasts.
Not all lesions revealed by a mammogram will be a cancerous growth; quite often they will be cysts - a bag full of fluid most common in women aged 40-50 years - that can be drained and removed with a breast incision of no more than 1cm and minimal affect on appearance. If a mammogram reveals that something needs attention, a breast ultrasound is most usually used to distinguish a cyst from a solid lump, and this can be quickly arranged during the same visit.
Routine digital breast screening by female radiographers costs just £185 and to examine both breasts takes no more than 15 minutes, with immediate reporting. Appointments are made within 24 hours to suit individual needs, even outside of the Centre's normal 9am to 6pm hours.
Contact details:
Sue Milner
comprehensive Breast Care Centre
The Princess Grace Hospital
020 7908 2003
www.theprincessgracehospital.com
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