Within days of the mammogram that revealed a lump in her breast, Beth Hazel had a biopsy, met with her team of specialists and scheduled surgery for the following week.
“I was in shock,” Hazel said of how quickly she was ushered in at St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore.
Hazel, a kindergarten teacher in Howard County, expected it take longer, perhaps to have to wait days or weeks to just schedule an appointment with her surgeon.
But St. Agnes, like other hospitals in the area and around the country, has taken steps to fast-track breast cancer diagnosis at the Breast Center.
Knowing sooner might not change the prognosis, but it can put the patient’s mind at ease, said Dr. Diana Griffiths, medical director of the Breast Center.
“It takes away the anxiety of that waiting period,” she said.
Patients make a single call to the center and are channeled to the right physicians, Griffiths said. They often can have a mammography and a biopsy performed on the same day, rather than waiting to schedule an appointment with a surgeon.
Last year, a third of the patients had biopsies within a week, and 12 percent on the same day, she said.
The rapid diagnosis is part of the center’s multi-disciplinary approach, which brings together surgeons, pathologist, radiologists, nurses and physicians to treat the single patient.
“It’s precisely because we have a system that works. We have a team that knows what the other one can do and we trust each other,” she said.
The concept of rapid diagnosis isn’t new, and many hospitals are starting to brand it and promote it, said Dr. Gary Cohen, medical director of the Sandra and Malcolm Berman Center Institute at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.
GBMC has had a rapid diagnostic center for five years, where about half of the patients will have a biopsy on the same day as the mammogram.
“We had to do something about the emotional toll of the diagnosis or rule-out of cancer had on women,” said Dr. Alexander Munitz, director of GBMC’s breast imaging center.
The time it takes to diagnose the breast cancer likely won’t affect the outcome, but it’s critical for the patient.
“This has to do with the recognition of the plight of women as patients,” Cohen said. “There’s some enhanced degree of compassion and wanting to do the right thing.”
