The Mayo Clinic, operating in Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; and Scottsdale, Arizona, is a not-for-profit clinic. Mayo provides clinical and hospital services for almost every complex illness, with teams of doctors and specialists on hand to provide a comprehensive diagnosis and treatment plan. Mayo Clinic, in addition to its other offerings, provides high-quality comprehensive treatment for breast cancer.
Mayo Clinic and Breast Cancer
Each year, approximately 1,300 new breast cancer patients come to the Mayo Clinic for treatment. With physicians specializing in treatment, evaluation, screening and education, Mayo is one of the most active treatment and research centers in the world for breast cancer treatment. Physicians and specialists help to develop personalized treatment plans for each patient, including innovative treatments, clinical trials and supportive care.
Diagnosis
Mayo has an extensive amount of breast cancer screening tools at its disposal. Breast cancer screening tools include state of the art MRI's which allow for breast and surgical biopsies to be performed with a guided MRI. Ultrasound and mammography services are also available, and because Mayo understands that waiting for results can be stressful, they offer test results within 24 to 48 hours after biopsies are scheduled and performed.
Treatment Options
Mayo Clinic team members and patients work together to decide the appropriate treatment plan for each breast cancer diagnosis. Many different types of treatment are offered at Mayo for breast cancer, including radiation, chemotherapy, surgery, hormone therapy, or a combination of several different treatment factors. A health care team is assembled for each patient, comprised of doctors that specialize in the particular treatment. A surgeon and a radiologist, for example, will be part of the health care team for a patient who requires both surgery and radiology.
Surgery
May surgeons perform an estimated 750 breast cancer surgeries annually. Each of the major types of breast cancer surgery are available at Mayo, including lumpectomies, simple mastectomies, skin-sparing mastectomies, radical mastectomies and modified radical mastectomies. Sentinel node biopsy, a new and less invasive procedure which involves the use of radioactive fluid and dye to remove and biopsy only those lymph nodes most likely to be affected by cancer, is also offered at Mayo.
There is almost no wait for surgery at Mayo, with patients able to schedule an operation for the day after it is recommended. Statistics provided by Mayo demonstrate that patients who have surgery at high-volume clinics that perform many surgeries tend to have better results. Clinical trials were also underway in 2009, involving two new potential surgery options for breast cancer: MR-focused ultrasound ablation to remove cancer cells and tumors, and radioactive seed localization.
Other Therapies
A wide range of chemotherapy drugs are also available at Mayo, along with radiation and hormonal therapy. Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy is performed prior to surgery in certain cases, to help make breast tumors small enough to remove with mastectomy or lumpectomy. Adjuvant chemotherapy is administered after surgery to ensure that all cancer cells are removed. Chemotherapy is available in pill form or via intravenous injection. Radiation may also be used before and after therapy. Finally, hormone therapies are used as a long-term treatment in hormone receptive cancer, to block estrogen and prevent a possible recurrence of breast cancer.
Clinical trials are often performed at Mayo to test new combinations of drugs and drug therapies to find the best treatments for breast cancer.
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