Breast Unit

Our annual figures

Consultations

Mammographies

Ultrasounds

MRIs

Breast care

Paideia International Hospital’s breast unit offers a complete care pathway, from prevention to diagnosis, treatment and surgery, responding to all women’s health needs.

Direct digital mammography with contrast medium (CEM)

Specialist breast examination

Breast examinations consist of a thorough clinical examination of the breasts.

Medical history - collection of information by the physician on the patient's current health status and medical history including age of first pregnancy, how long they breast-fed for, the ages they had their first and last menstrual cycle (if applicable) and family history of breast cancer, all in order to determine the presence of possible risk factors.
Observation of the breasts in different positions (sitting, with arms raised, lying down, etc.) to assess their size, symmetry and shape.
Palpation of the breasts to examine for accessory breast tissue, axillary lymph nodes, inframammary folds and supra- and subclavicular fossae.
Palpation of the nipple and surrounding area to feel for any swelling or lumps. Finally, a gentle squeezing of the nipple to detect secretion of any fluid.

Paideia Breast Unit

The unit’s multidisciplinary approach, engaging senologists, oncologists, plastic and reconstructive surgeons and psychologists, provide women with a complete course of examinations, consultations, tests and treatment in relation to the different medical cases and age categories.

Oncology

Breast surgery

Reconstructive plastic surgery

Cosmetic plastic surgery

Breast diagnostics

Breast ultrasound

Ultrasound examinations are decisive in differentiating cystic lesions from solid lesions, but in many cases it is used to characterise suspicious lesions. To analyse suspicious lesions, we use tools and software adapted to individual requirements in order to improve diagnostic accuracy.

In particular, the Breast Unit offers the following tests:

Digital mammography with tomosynthesis and contrast images

Digital mammograms are the main examination for breast diagnostics. It is based on X-rays that pass through the breast and display the image on the computer. A valuable support to direct digital mammography is tomosynthesis.

This technique is a diagnostic tool that studies different parts of the breast enabling significant findings to be visualised more easily in order to diagnose breast cancer early on. These layered images can reduce the problems of overlapping tissues that limit diagnosis capacity, particularly in dense breast tissue.

The main examination for early detection of cancer is the mammogram. Mammograms are still often refused by patients because of the fear of the pain caused by compressing the breast. Paideia International Hospital’s mammographs reduce patient discomfort and pain without diminishing the image quality or varying the radiation dose.

The main causes of pain reported by the patient are:

To reduce the discomfort, a new mammogram machine has been designed with a curved compressor with rounded edges and faster tomosynthesis. The curved compressor offers an better hold of the breast and employs much more even and less intense compression than previous systems.

The characteristics of the mammogram are:

Faster procedures:

Breast MRIs

A contrast-enhanced breast MRI is currently a second-tier examination; it is used for solving diagnostic-clinical problems that can’t be resolved by conventional examination techniques (mammogram and ultrasound).

The main indications for using this technique are:

DEXA (Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry)

Measuring bone mineral density using the DEXA technique is an important supplementary examination for all menopausal women.

Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry measures and monitors the regional and total body distribution of lean mass and fat tissue accurately and precisely. Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry is a rapid examination that focuses on certain areas of the body. DEXA technology uses extremely low-dose radiation for body scanning; the X-ray dose for each body composition examination is comparable to the natural radiation you are exposed to in a week. The X-ray beam is made up of energy levels that are absorbed differently by bone, muscle and fatty tissue. The difference in absorption is used to determine bone mineral density and body composition values.

Breast biopsy

Excisional biopsy of the breast involves removing a few cells or an area of tissue and subsequently carrying out an anatomopathological analysis of the collected samples. There are different types of breast biopsies depending on the type of needle that is used to take the sample. The simplest is ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration biopsy , i.e. taking a few cells from the suspected site using a fine needle; (FNAB and cytology sampling).

Another method is the ultrasound-guided core needle biopsy (CNB), a microhistological sampling; this involves taking a small area of tissue from the suspected side using a special device generally called a core needle.
Another biopsy technique is microhistological sampling performed by vacuum-assisted biopsy, which uses a computer-assisted probe to take biopsies of non-palpable lesions of the breast previously found through radiological or ultrasound tests. It takes tissue samples for histological analysis. VABB sampling is performed using ultrasound, mammogram, or MRI. It is then possible to guide the sampling using the method that best visualises the finding.

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