Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    A SHENZHEN hospital has become the first in China to equip itself with a specimen radiography system that enables it to conduct less painful breast cancer diagnosis.

    With the Hologic Trident Specimen Radiography System, and through the stereotactic vacuum-assisted biopsy (SVAB), patients can be saved from the traditional general anesthesia surgery for removing suspicious breast lesions for the diagnosis of breast cancer, Ava Kwong, chief of the University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Hospital’s breast surgery department, told reporters yesterday.

    “SVAB has become the standard of care for the work-up of suspicious breast calcifications in Hong Kong as well as in Western countries,” said Kwong, a famous Hong Kong breast surgery expert who has been leading the department since 2013. “The surgery can be done under local anesthesia and the cut is only around 3 mm.”

    Since the new diagnosis facility was introduced in March, the department has received more than 110 patients, with more than 80 percent found to have benign lesions, according to Xu Changfeng, a doctor in the department. These patients need not undergo extra surgeries for treatment, he said.

    Such a surgery, at around 7,000 yuan (US$1,011), isn’t more expensive than a traditional one, hurts less, and can be done within an hour, according to Zheng Aiqiu, another doctor.

    Aiming to give patients individualized treatments, Kwong said that she and her colleagues, both within and outside the department, meet weekly to discuss cases. More than 110 such meetings have been held since May 2013, she said.

    Breast cancer was the top killer of female Shenzhen residents in 2015, with 1,722 new patients being diagnosed that year, figures from the city’s center for chronic disease control and prevention showed.

    “Breast cancer has increasingly been found in younger women in Shenzhen and early detection and treatment is vital to survival,” said Jing Haiman, another doctor in the department.