Lewis-Gale Medical Center Introduces First Digital Mammography Systems in the Roanoke Valley with Opening of New 6,000 Square-foot Breast Center

A powerful new tool in early detection of breast cancer.

This year in America, more than 212,920 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Today, Lewis-Gale Medical Center announced that it is advancing the fight against this pervasive disease with the installation of two new state-of-the-art digital mammography systems for its patients. Lewis-Gale Medical Center is the only healthcare provider west of Charlottesville and east of Abingdon, Va. to provide the new technology to patients.

The installation of the new equipment coincides with the opening of the medical center’s new 6,000 square-foot Breast Center, located on the Salem campus in its medical office building-east adjacent to the hospital. The new comprehensive, full-service breast center, touting an elegant, relaxing, and spacious environment with valet parking, plasma televisions, relaxing music, and window views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, offers numerous efficiencies over traditional hospital-based breast centers for patients needing outpatient mammography and other diagnostic imaging and biopsy services.

The GE Healthcare Senographe® Essential System provides physicians with clear and precise all-digital images, rather than images on X-ray film. Additionally, the systems provide the largest field of view currently available, which can be extremely helpful for precision imaging of patients with diverse shapes and sizes.

“This is new and powerful technology for the detection and fight against breast cancer,” says Charlotte Tyson, chief operating officer, Lewis-Gale Medical Center. “Digital systems such as the new Senographe Essential allow us to offer our patients state-of-the-art mammograms that are faster and easier than ever before. And it gives our team of radiologists extremely accurate images to use in diagnosis.”

“This new digital technology will provide both high-precision accuracy and increased ease of use for our patients,” says Ronald Broadwell, M.D., one of several on-site board-certified radiologists, of Radiology Associates of Roanoke, who interpret mammography films and other diagnostic imaging services for the hospital and referring physicians. “Providing the best diagnostic equipment possible to patients is a vital step to good preventive health, and one we take very seriously.”

There are many advantages to a digital system. The images are clear and offer a better view of the breast, especially near the skin line, chest wall and in women with dense breast tissue types.

The digital image is ready to read within 10 seconds – there is no longer a wait for films to be developed to be sure the images are usable. Digital mammograms take as little as half the time of film. And if a second opinion is needed, the image can be sent electronically to a consulting physician virtually instantaneously.

The Senographe Essential at the Lewis-Gale Breast Center is equipped with the Seno Advantage 2 Review Workstation®. The workstation allows physicians to simply, quickly, and easily review patient’s images, including information from multi-modality studies, at a single point of review. Physicians have the ability to pull up a patient’s previous mammography exams for historical comparison or for comparison against other types of images, such as those acquired by ultrasound or MR, resulting in a more comprehensive view of a specific patient’s medical history. The workstation also simplifies the sharing of information and images to referring physicians and surgeons.

In addition to the two new digital mammography systems, the new Breast Center will offer ultrasound breast imaging, stereotactic biopsy, ultrasound-guided breast biopsy, MRI-guided biopsy, and bone densitometry.

In Virginia, more than 6,000 individuals will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. Mammograms are among the best early detection methods, yet 13 million U.S. women 40 years of age or older have never had a mammogram, according to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc.