VUE

has been thinking a lot about delayed care recently, as she's been engaged in a campaign to get her patients who skipped their 2020 mammograms back into the office. "I have staff calling these patients every day. We have sent them letters, thousands of letters. We are sending emails saying, 'come back and get your screening'," Weiselberg said. Some of Weiselberg's patients have not been back for a screening since 2019, which means they are nearly two years overdue for a mammogram. (The recommendation for screenings is once a year beginning at age 40.) The implications of this are clear to Weiselberg. "Every single week people come in for their annual mammogram and in under an hour find out they have breast cancer." This is why showing up for your annual mammogram is important. And while it is a bleak reality — the idea that you might have cancer and not know it — in a pre-pandemic world, where patients were reliably coming in for their screenings, this also meant cancers were detected early. Weiselberg understands people are afraid to come into the office. After the events of the past year people have a new or renewed fear of disease, and they don't want to engage with the concept of illness at all. Which is why, Weiselberg reports, the breast center is focused on making the patient experience as stress-free as possible. "Our whole philosophy here is to decrease anxiety and stress. And that means getting patients their results as soon as possible and getting their appointments as soon as possible." Most patients who come through the breast center are referred by their primary care doctor or gynecologist. Their doctor detects something abnormal during a checkup and needs diagnostic work done, so they call the breast center and speak to someone like Weiselberg. "Have them come right over," Weiselberg says is the most common response. According to Weiselberg, biopsy results and other diagnostic tests are provided even quicker — sometimes just 15 minutes after the test is run. What it comes down to is this: knowing is better than not knowing. This old adage proves true when you look at the data we have on breast cancer. Screening mammography is considered the only method proven to reduce deaths due to breast cancer due to early detection. Since mammograms were introduced in the U.S. in the 1980s, there have been 30 percent fewer deaths from breast cancer among women. So yes, it's time to get back in to see your doctors, whether it's to finally contend with that mystery pain or to finally attend your annual screenings. Why? "Because anything can happen in a year," Weiselberg said. The Leslie Simon Breast Care and Cytodiagnosis Center at Englewood Health V U E N J .C O M 128

• Cover