Get Healthy

(Photograph by John J. Watkins.)

Dr. Marylyn Rosencranz practices at the Indiana Breast Center, located within Diagnostic Specialties, in Crown Point. Graduating from Chicago Osteopathic in 1981, Rosencranz started out in general radiology, eventually specializing in mammography. The Indiana Breast Center focuses on diagnosis, using the latest technologies to perform routine screenings, biopsies and tumor evaluations.

Q. Why does breast cancer seem more prevalent now than, say, 20 years ago?

A. A couple of theories: there’s a question of pollution. There’s a question of hormones in food. You have hormones being placed in chickens and other meat. Last is that it is not necessarily occurrence, but that we are finding breast cancer better. Film screen mammography came into being in the 1970s, and that’s when we were able to start seeing things before a woman felt something. In the ’50s and ’60s, a woman would come in with a mass, and we would biopsy it, but we weren’t doing screenings. What is a little scarier is that we’re seeing younger and younger people with it. It’s not unheard of to diagnose somebody who’s in their twenties. We used to think of it as a disease more in fifty and above.

Q. What can be done to prevent breast cancer?

A. Lifestyle is huge when it comes to breast cancer. It is a known fact that exercise helps with any kind of cancer, and eating wisely, avoiding eating a lot of meat. If women who are diagnosed with breast cancer are overweight, and they lose weight, they have a much better chance of not having a recurrence than if they are overweight and maintain the extra pounds. So, being thin is significant. Genetics accounts for 10 percent of cases. For that 10 percent, it is significant for their families, so it is important to find those people.

Screening is important. The more [women] come in for screening, on an annual basis, the more we become familiar with their breast pattern, and the earliest we can find their breast cancers.

Q. Are there different kinds of breast cancer?

A. There are twenty different types. The most common type is infiltrating ductal. The cancer is in the duct that carries the milk from the sac that produces it to the nipple. Infiltrating lobular is actually in the sac where milk is produced. All cancers are graded, so even a lobular cancer can have a low grade, meaning it’s slow-growing, and it can have a high grade, meaning it’s fast-growing. An infiltrating ductal cancer can have a low grade, or a high grade, so you have all these variations.

Q. With so many types, is treatment streamlined for the specific type?

A. Treatment is streamlined to the person. If you line up four people, they all can have ductal cancer, but one has a low-grade, and one has a high-grade. Maybe somebody with a low grade has a large lesion, and somebody who has a high grade has a small lesion. The person with the high-grade small lesion is going to do better than the person with the low-grade that is big. You have to put everything together. You have to [establish] what type of tumor they have, what size it is, whether it’s anyplace else in the body, and what else is happening in the person’s life. You have to put all that together and determine what’s best for that person.

Q. What are the newest and best diagnostic techniques?

A. One of the best techniques, and the latest, is breast MRI [magnetic resonance imaging]. We do MRI on any woman diagnosed with breast cancer to determine the extent of disease, if there’s any other cancer in her breast, or if there’s any cancer in the opposite breast. We do it for women receiving chemotherapy to see if there is a response. And, we will do it in high-risk screenings. So, anybody who has that genetic history will get annual MRIs. One of the very newest things is breast tomosynthesis, which is a mammogram, but instead of taking one full image, you take multiple slices through the breast, using digital mammogram.

Q. What misconceptions do women have about breast cancer and testing?

A. One, women think if it’s not in their family, then they’re not going to get it. That’s definitely a myth. Two, a lot of women believe if they feel a lump, and the mammogram doesn’t see it, that it’s not important. And that’s a huge myth. If you feel a lump, you need to tell the facility, and they will go out of their way to evaluate that area. Also, I believe women think all mammography facilities are created equal. A facility where there are dedicated mammographers, where that’s all they do, will have the best care.