Advocate Lutheran General offers new mammogram technology

Advocate Lutheran General Hospital is pleased to announce that it is now the first hospital in Illinois to offer Contrast Enhanced Digital Mammography, or CEDM, at the Caldwell Breast Center.

CEDM uses a contrast injection, like with a CT scan, in combination with mammography to identify cancers that aren't visible on a standard mammogram. This type of mammography is typically performed following a mammogram or ultrasound exam to learn more about an area that looks abnormal.

Similar to a diagnostic breast MRI, the additional information CEDM provides can result in earlier detection of some cancers.

Some of the benefits of CEDM include shorter imaging time (it only takes eight minutes to image), cost reduction and superior comfort for patients who find an MRI confining. It also reduces the number of unnecessary biopsies, which shortens the time to treatment.

CEDM is FDA approved and has become the clinical standard of care for many practices worldwide in the diagnostic setting as a viable alternative to breast MRI. CEDM will initially be offered for newly diagnosed cancer patients to help define the extent of their disease.

"We are thrilled and honored to be the first hospital in Illinois to be able to offer this great service to our patients and the communities that we are so proud to serve," said Dr. Nila Alsheik, co-medical director of the Caldwell Breast Center at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge.

"Contrast Enhanced Digital Mammography provides us additional information beyond what a conventional mammogram can detect and helps us define the extent to which the disease has spread in newly diagnosed cancer patients.

"The imaging can also result in earlier detection of cancer and shortened time to treatment. Successful treatment and survival rates for breast cancer patients are dramatically increased by early detection, and this technology will be paramount in furthering that cause."

In the future, CEDM will be expanded and offered to asymptomatic, high-risk surveillance in patients at elevated lifetime risk for cancer, patients who are having a tumor shrunk prior to surgery to determine chemotherapy response, patients with clinical symptoms but a negative diagnostic work-up, and patients who can't have an MRI, like individuals with a pacemaker.