New device aids cancer detection
SUMMIT TWP — Months after the Butler Health System opened its new three-story medical office building that included an upgraded Women’s Care facility, the director of Women’s Imaging says a new piece of equipment is already achieving results.
Called a three-dimensional tomosynthesis machine, the equipment can take more precise images for mammography patients. In November, when the facility was opened, Dr. Ruthane Reginella said she thought its addition could mean big things for cancer detection at BHS — as much as a 30 percent increase. So far, it looks like she was correct.
“Our preliminary data really are quite encouraging,” said Reginella. “The numbers are small, but in that comparative period there has been an increase.”
Over the same four month period compared to last year — January through April — Reginella said the hospital has had an increase of about 13 cancer detections: from 23 last year to 36 this year.
BHS opened its new facility in November of last year, but staff certifications and training on the tomosynthesis machine meant it became available to patients starting in January.
Dr. Reginella stressed that the data are limited at this point because of the short time that doctors are able to draw from when comparing detection rates.
“It’ll be interesting over the entire year,” she Sadi. “I think that’s going to give us a more accurate picture. But already we are seeing more cancers that are smaller.”
That increased detection rate is a direct result of the machine’s ability to see through dense tissue in ways that a two-dimensional image can’t. The big advancement centers around being able to image thinner sections of a patient’s breast and catch tumors when they are smaller, and in earlier stages of development.
“What happens sometimes, unfortunately with breast cancer, is that it can hide in dense tissue and it is obscured or overlapped, and we don’t see it until it gets significantly larger,” said Reginella.
She said the machine’s benefits are being seen in other ways as well: more traffic at the new facility due to an increase in patients from surrounding counties is one of them.
“We’re getting phone calls and people wanting to come in for the 3-D,” Reginella said, “and we are seeing more and more people from outlying areas; more and more new patients.”
The facility may be seeing more patients these days, but there are fewer return visits by patients who have unclear results and need follow-up work, Reginella said. The increase in imaging quality means that masses which might have worried doctors before — and meant a follow-up visit for the patient — don’t happen nearly as frequently.
“It reduces cost for that additional imaging, and the patient’s anxiety about having to return, perhaps ultimately for nothing, doesn’t exist,” she said.
Another thing getting BHS high marks with patients is the facility itself, Reginella said. The department’s space is larger than it’s former home, with more current amenities and a layout that allows patients more privacy.
“We were really confined by the old space we had at the old hospital,” she said. “Here patients aren’t sitting on top of each other, and we’re not landlocked by other departments. They’ve (patients) given us very, very positive feedback about it.”
