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Your Questions about Breast Cancer Screening, Diagnosis, and Local Follow-up
Introduction
Jules Bordet Institute is a centre devoted to cancer treatment only, from the taking charge of patients suffering from cancer to the research and instruction.
A multidisciplinary approach of cancer is essential for a reliable, rapid diagnosis, for the best treatment and for an appropriate follow-up.
This multidisciplinary approach involves a narrow communication between the different diagnostic (medical imaging services, pathology, …) and therapeutic (surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy) medical services, but it also requires a team work that gathers all the hospital actors in order to set up coherence in the taking charge by the medical and paramedical team.
Breast cancer
Breast cancer represents a serious problem within the public health sector.
At the moment, 5, 500 new cases per year are surveyed in Belgium .
The number of breast cancer increases as people get older. One third of cancers will break out in less-than-fifty-year-old women, who have a family and a job at this age.
One woman in nine will develop breast cancer during her lifetime. This also means that eight women in nine won't have it, though many among them will present a symptom that will make them see a doctor : pain, lump, discharge, … and thus they will benefit from a taking charge.
The mastology multidisciplinary team has different missions :
- A breast diseases diagnosis on the basis of a symptom or a complaint
- A routine breast cancer screening; that is to say, detecting abnormalities before they are noticeable.
- A careful follow-up of patients suffering from breast cancer in order to prevent any recurrence.
An early diagnosis enables specialists to detect cancer at least one year before it breaks out clinically; therefore, it enables a 30% decrease in breast cancer mortality.
Mastology at Bordet Institute
The detection of radiological abnormalities in breast absolutely requires further checking in order to get a diagnosis by microbiopsy or macrobiopsy.
If the injury is harmless, no surgery will take place ; if it is cancerous, therapy is the most suitable approach to the patient situation.
Jules Bordet Institute's Mastology Unit
The diversity of taking charge requires a personalised knowledge of patients. Before examining each female patient, specialists must absolutely know the reason of her examination, have access to her medical or surgical records (computerised records) and ask her questions, especially if it is her first mastology check-up.
It is essential to have access to patient's whole medical imaging. Therefore, a patient must bring all the documents that she possesses. As for examinations that took place in the unit, Bordet Institute has an archiving system of computerised images that enables people to compare images much more easily.
Jules Bordet Institute has modern equipment (mammography machine, stereotaxic device on a digital table, ultrasonograph, …) in suitable premises. It also has a medical and paramedical staff that is particularly qualified and specialised in the micro and macrobiopsy field, which requires to be very accurate.
For a good communication between staff members, the place of work is as much essential as efficient equipment.
This place offers a friendly, calm environment which takes into account the psychological impact that may be caused by the discovery of an abnormality or the assesment of a treatment efficiency; for instance, in the case of a patient who is receiving chemotherapy.
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