The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

MORE than 3,000 Bahamian women have already benefited from a new state-of-the-art 3D mammogram machine at the Princess Margaret Hospital that is being hailed as the “Rolls Royce” of diagnostic mammography.

Speaking at the official commissioning of the digital mammogram machine, hospital administrator Mary Lightbourne Walker said the new machine has changed the landscape of how breast cancer is diagnosed.

She said since the machine was first installed in 2012, 3,100 women have been screened using the machine.

She also said the machine has cut the time women waited to be screened from three months to no wait at all.

Minister of Health Dr Perry Gomez said despite the new technology, breast cancer remains the number one killer in of women in the Bahamas.

However, he said the new machine can detect breast cancer before symptoms even appear and encouraged all women to take advantage of the new advanced technology.

“In 2012, the mortality rate for breast cancer for women was 7.9 per cent, which was the highest in relation to other cancers in that period.

“Research has determined that the Bahamas has one of the highest incidence of inherited breast cancer in the world. The average age at the time of diagnosis in this country was also lower than that of women in the United States.

“They determined that 48.5 per cent, so almost 50 per cent of the women in the Bahamas who have been diagnosed with breast cancer are under the age of 50 at the time they are diagnosed and a full 20 per cent under the age of 40,” he said.

“There is a 20 year age difference when diagnosed between women in the United States and women in the Bahamas. The average age in the United States is 62 and the average age in the Bahamas is 42. What they also found is that in the Bahamas 44.6 per cent, almost half of these are under 50 years of age when diagnosed and also that they were diagnosed at a much later state of their disease – they were either in stage three of four – in comparison with only 12 per cent in the US at the time of diagnosis.
“In short, the disease is diagnosed too late in our country when it is probably already spread and that is why the acquisitions of these two machines are so important because with these machines we can detect breast cancer before you can feel it, if you are judicious in how you get your routine mammograms.

“So please as we have this state-of-the-art technology, let us use this technology to the benefit of us all, there is no use having it and you home watching TV or at the fish fry, we must utilise the machine.”

Another digital mammogram machine was purchased for Freeport. Dr Gomez said these machines are the first of their kind in the region.

The use of this technology has provided a 27 per cent improvement in cancer detection rates and a 40 per cent increase in invasive cancer detection.