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| Dr. Joel Aronowitz |
BREAST CANCER AWARENESS: What to do if you find a lump in your breast?!
Joel A. Aronowitz: Okay, so a little advice about.
Bridget:
Yeah, talking about breast cancer.
Joel A. Aronowitz:
So you have found a lump in the breast. Don't
panic. It's, it's actually a good thing because if it happens to be a breast
cancer, then great, you caught it early and let's do something about it. So
what do you do? It depends on who your primary care doctor is. But you want to
be referred to a breast center or a breast surgeon who is on board with doing
oncoplastic type surgery.
So that
might be a plastic surgeon that you know already who you've used for different
things. It may be your GP, it may be your gynecologist. For many women,
especially younger women, it's their gynecologist. So what you want to do
before you go down any diagnostic path is you'll have a mammogram typically and
many times an ultrasound to evaluate the mass. And if the mass persists or if
it's suspicious, then they'll either delay it a little bit, they'll say, well,
let's wait a month and see what happens, or they'll say, let's just go ahead
and do a biopsy. And the biopsy is done with a needle typically.
And from
that very point, before they do the biopsy, you want to be taken care of by a
group of doctors who are completely on board and understand oncoplastic surgery
that is using plastic surgery principles to apply to breast cancer surgery. So
that if the biopsy is taken through a part of the skin, it's taken through a
part of the skin that's going to be removed anyway and it doesn't cause
additional scars or need for removing skin because it was in the needle tract
point.
And then
let's say that that lump turns out to be a breast cancer, then fine. Basically
you'll go down the path of lumpectomy and radiation and many times type of
chemotherapy versus surgery. I would encourage all women to consider having
nipple sparing mastectomy. Whether you have a small breast or a large breast,
nipple sparing mastectomy can be the answer for you because it's removing a
very, very high percentage of the breast tissue that could become cancerous
later as well as the breast cancer. And it should obviate the need for a
radiation or chemotherapy afterward because having a nipple sparing mastectomy
is equally effective as a traditional mastectomy.
And as long
as you're going to an experienced group or doctor plastic surgeon, usually it's
a plastic surgeon breast surgeon combination. Most of the time you can have a
very nice cosmetic result and a very effective oncologic surgery at the same
time.
Bridget:
Great.
Joel A. Aronowitz: That's my two cent worth.
Bridget:
That's good.
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