Main content Breast Health & Breast Cancer Interview with Meridithe Mendelsohn This is a transcript of the Audio: Breast Health & Breast Cancer (http://38.111.154.172/SutterEastBay/meridithe_mendelsohn.wma). To listen you may download Windows Media Player (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download). Ms. Meredithe Mendelsohn: Hi. I'm Meridithe Mendelsohn from the Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. We're going to talk about breast health and breast cancer. Male Interviewer: What's the most important thing that our listeners need to know about breast health and breast cancer? Ms. Mendelsohn: The most important thing is early detection saves lives. That is really critical. So what that means is that women really need to be very familiar with their own breasts, so we encourage breast self-examination and your doctor or nurse practitioner can help you learn how to do that properly. But also certainly screening mammography for women over 40 years of age. Now, that's the American Cancer Society guideline. If there is a history of breast cancer in your family or if you have a personal history of other cancer, there may be a need to screen at a younger age. So that's certainly something you want to talk to your doctor about and get an expert opinion about. Interviewer: How common is breast cancer in women? Ms. Mendelsohn: It's extremely common, way too common. One out of seven women get breast cancer. That's the latest statistic now. You know, the earlier we find it, the more treatable it is, more curable it is, so that's really, you know, the key thing is just to make sure that you're getting screened as often as you should. It is, of course, extremely important to get your mammogram and follow through with any screening recommendations. But also, it's really important to know who's reading that mammogram, which doctors are reading that, which radiologists and is this an expertise that they have. At the Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center we have radiologists who specialize in mammography. They read over 10,000 examinations a year, 10,000 studies. And this is really important. It's just common sense that anybody who does something more does it better and so that's really the point. You want somebody who's truly an expert in this. Interviewer: What is the Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center and what's unique about it? Ms. Mendelsohn: The Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center is a diagnostic center, a comprehensive breast center, so this is really going to be the first of its kind here in the East Bay. And what I mean by comprehensive is that we offer all of the services that women will need within the medical center here. The Breast Center is in the process of being built. It will be ready about a year from now and -- but we have most of the programs in place currently. We've also gone ahead and purchased all of the new state of the art digital equipment for imaging. And the things that we're going to offer there, I would say the strongest thing that we're going to offer there is a very short time from an abnormal finding to a diagnosis. Right now women can wait several weeks from the time they get that abnormal mammogram report until they actually know whether or not they have cancer. And as you can imagine, that's really very anxiety producing. You can't really get on with your life until you know, you know, what is going on with your body, so -- Interviewer: So you have a quicker turnaround. Ms. Mendelsohn: Exactly. So we're shooting for a 24 to 48 hour turnaround on that so that is significantly shortened. Interviewer: What's the story behind the center? Why is Alta Bates Summit building this center? Ms. Mendelsohn: Well, we have such terrific programs here already in terms of breast health and breast cancer, but this way we're going to bring everything together and be able to treat the woman and the whole person really. We have lots of programs from peer support programs for women who are newly diagnosed with breast cancer to high-risk programs for women who are at higher risk for breast cancer but have no signs or symptoms. We also are very interested in the way that, in informing young women about breast cancer and in treating them, you know, as effectively as possible, as early as possible. I think there's a myth about young women not getting breast cancer, which really is not true, at least in our area. We have lots of very young patients. But, you know, in other words somebody could come in, a young woman could come in because there's a history of breast cancer in her family and she's concerned about that; be seen through our high risk program, possibly have genetic testing, know that she carries the gene mutation for breast cancer and decide to do some type of prophylactic treatment in order to avoid getting breast cancer. Interviewer: You said there's some misperception that women can't get breast cancer. Ms. Mendelsohn: I hear that really often. Women go to their doctor. They have pain or a lump and are told, oh, no, you're not going to get a mammogram; you're too young to get breast cancer. So there's a misconception among physicians as well. So one of the things that has come out recently in the last year or two is the use of MRI for young women in terms of screening and this is because of the dense tissue that young women have in their breasts and it's proven to be extremely effective for screening younger women. Interviewer: It sounds like one of the things that you're going to be offering is sort of educational resources for women. Can you suggest other resources for women who want to learn more about how to do self-exams, want to simply learn more about all of the issues involving breast cancer? Ms. Mendelsohn: Oh, sure. Actually our website is up on the altabatessummit.org site. If you go to the Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center pages, there's lots of links there for websites that are very good in this regard. There's the, of course, National Cancer Institute's site. There's the American Cancer Society site, the Susan G. Komen Foundation site. There's another site that I like quite a bit which is called imaginis.com, so there's a lot of resources online particularly. Also, we have a resource center, the Markstein Cancer Education and Prevention Center. In our new facility that will be right next door to us. Right now it's just upstairs, but there's lots of resource materials there as well. Interviewer: Which campus is the new facility at? Ms. Mendelsohn: This is at the Summit campus. The new Breast Center will be located in the Providence Pavilion there. (Recording Ends) - INTERVIEW CONCLUDED - Go to the Cancer Health Audio Web Page (http://www.altabatessummit.org/health/audio_cancerhealthtips.html)