The trend in breast cancer surgery is toward less and less invasive procedures.
At Orange City Area Health System, patients that undergo breast cancer surgery also have a simple procedure done that can save many from a more complicated process.
Gloria Zylstra has been breast cancer free for a year now. Her cancer was found by a routine mammogram at a very early stage. Which meant, for her a better chance at survival and a less painful fight.
"I'm not sure I would've agreed to anything else if they hadn't suggested that. Cause it's a very minor procedure – not invasive – easy to recover from," says Gloria Zylstra from Sioux Center.
Gloria, like many breast cancer patients at Orange City Area Health System, underwent a sentinel lymph node biopsy at the same time of their surgery.
A machine, used in conjunction with a radioactive substance and an injected dye, allows doctors to see where the cancer has spread. If the cancer in contained to the "sentinel" node, the surgery can stop there.
"it's over a 95% chance that if the sentinel lymph node is negative – meaning there are no tumor cells, there's a very low chance that there are tumor cells that have skipped the sentinel lymph node and spread elsewhere," says Dr. Brent Nykamp, a surgeon at Orange City Area Health System.
Thanks to procedures like this many women have one to three lymph nodes removed, instead of 15 to 20. That can avoid problems like painful lymphedema: swelling of the arm that can be permanent.
But more importantly, for women like Gloria, it means less time recovering from breast cancer and more time focusing on more important things.
"the recovery is very easy – now, I don't know if I'm a typical patient or not, but within 2 ½ weeks that I had the biopsy done, I ran the tulip festival race," says Zylstra.
If you want more information on sentinel node biopsies, visit this link to Orange City Area Health's website: http://ochealthsystem.org/?s=sentinel+node
