LONGMONT, Colo. — UCHealth said it's the first to offer a kind of mammogram in Colorado that doctors say can be a game changer when it comes to breast cancer.
Right now it’s being offered at the Longs Peak Medical Center in Longmont. Dr. Elizabeth Vorhis, a breast radiologist said she uses an IV contrast during a mammogram. It's the same kind of process if you go to the emergency room and get a stomach or chest CT scan.
But when it comes to scanning for breast cancer, this can be a big difference for women with dense tissue.
"The women that we have a hardest time finding breast cancer in mammography have dense breast tissue," Dr. Vorhis said.
That's because their mammograms have a lot of background white that can hide cancer versus the new technology on the bottom that gets rid of that background white and doctors can clearly see a cancer spot, plus additional spots that would have gone undetected or required additional testing.
"That's a lot for a lot of these women to have, in addition to mammography, some women have an ultrasound, additional screening with ultrasound may be enough, but it's all more," Dr. Vorhis said. "It's all extra, and both convincing women that they need to do that, and figuring out ways for it to get paid for have been challenging."
On the flip end, this kind of imaging can give women a more definitive "all clear" that they are OK without additional testing.
"What we really want to do is reduce the medical footprint that breast screening requires for so many women," Dr. Vorhis said. "We ask them to do more than one exam, we ask them to come back for six month follow up of probably benign findings, we ask them to go through biopsies that end up not being cancer. If we can reduce some of that, then more women are going to come to us for screening. We have more time to see more women."
Dr. Vorhis said with a clear image, she can send a patient right to a surgeon and get treatment started faster. Versus before, a woman would have to go through an MRI, a potential ultra sound and then start surgery and treatment.
This new approach does come with its challenges, though. The technology was FDA approved in 2011, but it's been hard to expand because of challenges with insurance coverage.
In most cases, it's considered a diagnostic test, with a charge for the IV contrast, not a preventative screening, which is often free.
Dr. Vorhis said it would be cheaper than an MRI and treating cancer later.
Because it’s so limited, right now the Longmont clinic is only serving the immediate community and hope the technology expands.
