Albert Einstein Medical Center installs new digital mammography machines

By Frank Visco
Collegian Editor
January 24, 2007

Albert Einstein Medical Center has become what hospital officials say is the first Philadelphia hospital to go all digital for breast imaging. The hospital recently installed four full-fledged digital mammography units in the Women’s Center.

The new units are open to all women in the La Salle community. Although the rule of thumb is not to get annual mammograms until the age of 40, hospital officials encourage any women with histories of breast cancer in their families to get screened, as they are more at risk.

“Many patients don’t get tested because of fear,” said Lisa Jablon, the Director of Einstein’s High Risk Breast Program. “They follow the ‘if you don’t know, it won’t hurt you’ mantra. However, early detection can usually help curtail many problems, and so it really is beneficial to come in and get tested.”

According to Juanita Way, Director of the Marion-Louise Saltzman Women’s Center at the Albert Einstein Medical Center, the upgrade to digital mammography represents the next step in the center’s continual dedication to “humanizing the process.” While many hospitals offer adequate care for patients concerned with breast problems, Way says that the Women’s Center has always been unique in this regard.

In many hospitals, women are forced to wait for their mammography results in cold, sterile waiting rooms, amidst a dozen others in nothing more than a hospital gown, said Way. However, the Women’s Center has a fully furnished waiting room with a warm and inviting color scheme, as well as personalized dressing rooms to improve the physical setting in which a mammography is taken.

Jablon says digital mammography takes this “humanizing process” a step further by greatly reducing the possibility of having to get another screening done. A manual mammography can result in a picture that is too dark or out of focus, but digital has no such problems.

“A lot of women have anxiety about getting screened, and it makes matters worse when something goes wrong and they need to get the screening redone,” Jablon said. “Digital mammography allows the technicians to manipulate, enhance or magnify the picture. It serves to make the whole experience a lot less traumatic.”

A particular benefit of digital mammography is that it makes it easier to screen dense breast tissue because of the ability to manipulate the density on a computer. Additionally, it makes the whole process faster and allows radiologists to instantly pull the X-ray up on a personal computer and walk the patient through it.

The new machines have also worked to relieve the pressures involved in scheduling an appointment for a mammography in Philadelphia, where, according to Way, it can take two to four months to get screened. Since digital takes less time than film, Way estimates that the Women’s Center has gone from doing 55 mammagrophies per day to about 80.

“Women are nervous enough as it is and shouldn’t have to wait that long,” Way said. “This helps speed along the process and take some more anxiety off.”

In addition to going all digital, the Women’s Center has also increased its diagnostic ultrasound facilities. Furthermore, Way says more rooms are currently under construction and that the Women’s Center will soon be up to 100 mammographies per day.

“We’re trying to make the whole experience easier and more personalized for women,” she said.

The Women’s Center was built 10 years ago in the hopes of providing such personalized care, said Way.

“When Saltzman was dealing with her breast cancer, she felt that care was fragmented,” Way said. “She thought the people were nice, but that she was just another number. As a result, her children developed the center in her memory so that other women could receive the kind of treatment she wished she had received.”

According to Way, the Women’s Center’s commitment to the patients is the main reason she loves her job. She recalls her late grandmother’s bout with breast cancer, saying she thinks her grandmother would’ve been better off in the Women’s Center.

“I truly believe that if my grandmother had gone to a place like this, she would’ve been diagnosed earlier and lived longer,” she said. “Because of that I jump at the chance to work here.”

viscof1@lasalle.edu