By Sydney McCalla as told to Jenny Song

Beating Breast Cancer in the Bronx

A breast surgeon builds community awareness

By Sydney McCalla as told to Jenny Song

As chief of the breast service at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in New York City, I work in an area known as the South Bronx, where nearly half of the population lives at or below the poverty level. The majority of residents are Spanish-speaking, and a large number are undocumented immigrants. The socioeconomic level in this area, combined with a perceived lack of access to health care, has contributed to troubling health disparities. In this day and age, many of our patients, women in their 40s and 50s, are presenting with late-stage breast cancer.

I remember a case a few years ago, in which a single mother with five children came to the hospital because the lump growing in her breast had become unbearably painful. Her basic concern while she watched the lump grow was how to take care of her children. By the time she was seen, she had a mass that was almost four inches in size. She lived less than one year.

Thankfully, not all the cases I see are like that one, but far too many women are coming in with advanced-stage disease because they never had a mammogram. The amazing thing that I’ve learned over the years is that despite their advanced disease, once many of these patients have made up their minds to get treatment, they become the most diligent patients that I have. I can’t help but wonder: If only these women had come in for a mammogram, it’s likely their disease would have been diagnosed at an earlier stage and perhaps they would still be alive.

This is part of the reason I serve as an American Cancer Society volunteer. It is important to go out into the community to lecture and raise awareness about breast cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment.

When I give presentations, I show pictures of patients who have come in with stage III and stage IV disease to stress the importance of screening. I was apprehensive about showing the images at first, fearing it would do more harm than good. However, I’ve learned over the years that it’s a very effective tool to get people to realize the severity of the situation. People don’t grasp what can happen to them if they neglect the disease. The photos bring the point home, especially when they see that these are women in their 40s and 50s.

At Lincoln, which is a part of the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, our policy is to provide care without regard to a person’s ability to pay. Sometimes patients don’t know that and don’t take advantage of the available services. So when I go out to lecture, I tell people about the programs and the facilities at Lincoln that provide state-of-the-art screening for breast, prostate and colorectal cancers. We also have people on staff who can communicate with non-English speaking patients in their native languages.