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Jacqueline M. Wilentz Comprehensive Breast Center actively pursues
research opportunities to provide patients with additional treatment
choices.
Jacqueline M. Wilentz Comprehensive Breast Center has been the
United States leader in patient enrollment to the multinational
clinical trail of CT-laser mammography (CTLM). CTLM is being
studied as a method that could be used in conjunction with traditional
mammography to evaluate the need for a biopsy in patients with
dense breast tissue.
As one of some 35 institutions from the United States and Canada
continuing to collect follow-up data for the Digital Mammographic
Imaging Screening Trial (DMIST), Jacqueline M. Wilentz Comprehensive
Breast Center was on of just two study sites to achieve a perfect
score in the participant case review portion of an American College
of Radiology site survey conducted in 2004.
Under the direction of medical director Melinda Staiger, M.D.,
our breast center enrolled 700 women in this study to compare the
accuracy of digital mammography with the standard film-screen method. The
public can access the study’s findings at www.cancer.gov/dmist.
The Jacqueline M. Wilentz Comprehensive Breast Center was among
more than 400 facilities across the United States, Puerto Rico
and Canada participating in the Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene
(STAR) Trial. One of the largest-ever breast cancer prevention
trials conducted by the NSABP, it is evaluating whether the drug
raloxifene compares with the drug tamoxifen in reducing the incidence
of breast cancer in women who are at an increased risk for developing
the disease. For information on the study, visit www.cancer.gov/star.
The results of the Jacqueline M. Wilentz Comprehensive Breast
Center’s 13th annual surgery report (1994-2007) confirms
the benefits of obtaining at least 5 millimeters of disease-free
breast tissue around a tumor during breast conservation surgery
or mastectomy.
Since Monmouth Medical Center’s Department of Surgery instituted
a 5-millimeter negative margin requirement in 1994, only one of
431 patients (0.2 percent) has had a post-breast conservation local
recurrence and only four of 370 patients (1.4 percent) have had
a post-mastectomy chest wall recurrence after a first or second
surgery. This finding underscores the importance of Monmouth’s
multidisciplinary approach and management of each phase of the
course of breast treatment, particularly the meticulous analysis
by the Department of Pathology to ensure clear margins of 5 millimeters,
according to Michael A. Goldfarb, M.D., FACS, chairman and residency
program director of Monmouth Medical Center’s Department
of Surgery, who also serves as the breast center’s surgical
coordinator.
Here are several other major highlights of the annual study, which
provides a cumulative outcome analysis of 790 definitive breast
operations from 1994 to 2007:
- 946 surgical procedures were performed on 764 patients, including
491 segmentectomies, 85 re-excisions and 370 mastectomies.
- When an invasive tumor was equal or less than 2 centimeters,
23% of patients (71 of 308) had at least one positive lymph node.
But when the tumor was more than 2 centimeters, 48% (161 of 334)
had at least one positive node.
- Among those 764 surgery patients, there has been an average
84.8% survival rate from 1995 to present — 90.4% among
breast conservation patients and 79.8% among mastectomy patients.
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CTLM
