Have you checked your breasts lately?
Asian Breast Center offers first-of-its-kind radiation and imaging treatments in onestop breast center
In the Philippines, breast cancer continues to strike down 50 percent of those diagnosed with it. Look within your immediate family or even two degrees away and you will find someone who has been diagnosed with it or has died from it.
And it’s because of a very simple reason.
“Most are discovered at a late stage.”
American-trained breast surgeon Dr. Norman San Agustin makes that solid pronouncement at the launch of the Asian Breast Center in Centuria Medical in Makati City.
He explains, “Breast cancer, yes it’s chronic and fatal, but if caught in an early stage, it is totally curable.” He adds, “But for Pinays, there is a cycle of fear, that once you develop breast cancer, you lose three things: your breast, your dignity as a woman, and your life.
Because of advances in modes of diagnoses and kinds of treatments, Dr. San Agustin says that all of these are totally irrelevant to what is going on now.
“Almost everyone survives, we have 98 percent survival for stage 0, for Pete’s sake! You have a higher probability of getting run over by Santa’s reindeer than dying from breast cancer,” he admonishes, half in jest and half seriously.
That’s why he decided to open the Asian Breast Center in Centuria Medical, the Philippines first medical mall. After practicing for over 20 years in the Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey, he is extremely excited to open a center that is fully and entirely focused on all things breast-related.
It is a first in the Philippines and while similar facilities exist in more progressive Asian countries like China, Singapore, and South Korea, the Asian Breast Center offers stateof-the-art services that are not as expensive as the major hospitals. While it has the standard examinations like digital mammography and ultrasounds, it will also have the Molecular Breast Imaging and Dense Breasts and the Intraoperative Radiation Therapy.
As an outpatient facility, its prices will be competitive and at par with the best of the best.
Dr. San Agustin shares, “After 20 years of doing breast surgery in the United States, I began to realize that as treatments and survival improved all over the world, the Philippines still had one of the highest incidences of breast cancer in the world. Of the 50 percent who died from it, 70 percen died without treatment or inadequate treatment! I said to myself, there must be a way to solve this because it’s a real issue.”
Dr. San Agustin wants to offer the kind of quality care that people are looking for, but this time, they don’t have to go to the United States, Europe or other parts of the world to get that treatment.
He adds, “People are lulled into a sense of complacency, because they are getting their diagnostic modality from a mammogram, but it misses a lot of cancers. So even with annual mammography, breast examinations, you have to be making sure you go to the right doctor, right facility.” MBI AND IORT 101
The Molecular Breast Imaging and Dense Breasts will pick up even liquid cancerous formations from a dense breast image. That is something the regular mammogram cannot offer.
The MBI is especially helpful for Asian women who generally have dense breasts, which means the breasts are composed mostly of connective tissue versus fatty tissue. The MBI is a new nuclear medicine technique that makes tumor cells visible with a functional camera, aided by a special dye, giving a usable image that the specialists can then interpret. It’s faster than an MRI and less costly.
The Intraoperative Radiation Therapy or IORT offers focused radiation treatment during surgery and the facility has its own operating room, dedicated to breast cancer cases, of course.
This innovative radiation treatment will inject a single dose of radiation for 30 minutes after a lumpectomy as the patient is sleeping. This effectively eliminates the need to come in for radiation every day for 6 1/2 weeks. It radiates the surrounding tissues moments after the lump has been removed. With IORT, there is more room for breast conservation versus total mastectomy and from 33 radiation sessions, it is brought down to one.
Because most of the doctors are trained in the United States, Dr. San Agustin explains, “You might as well call the Asian Breast Center the American Breast Care, as we are providing the same level of care you would get if you went to us there. It
‘Nobody is supposed to develop breast cancer at 35! We have to let go of the fatalistic attitude, God knows, God is in control, as it doesn’t work that way. We have to help ourselves where we can.’
will be an evidence-based practice, all the decisions based on the National Comprehensive Cancer Network or NCCN guidelines, so if you are treated here or you come to me in New Jersey, the place doesn’t matter, what is important is the doctor who treats you.”
Eventhough Asian Breast Center occupies the eighth floor of Centuria Medical, Dr. San Agustin wants us to think of ABC not as a clinic but a hospital that provides and cares for one disease, breast cancer, from early diagnosis and treatment to follow-up care.
As a one-step breast cancer facility, the ABC serves as a completely different model with its fully comprehensive yet multi-disciplinary approach. It has five surgeons: Dr. Norman San Agustin, Dr. Samuel Ang, Dr. Eduardo Santos, Dr. Brian Ang, and Dr. Gabriel Natividad. They are joined by one anesthesiologist, four radiologists, nine radiation oncologists, three nuclear medicine specialists, and two medical oncologist consultants.
The Asian Breast Center is also a forprofit, for-charity center, which means, once they become profitable, all their excess profits will go back to provincial hospitals. Their first beneficiary will be La Salle Dasmariñas as it has a Breast Center there, followed by provincial hospitals, and other foundations.
“Our model is to be multiplied, providing a kind of service available in other parts of the world but at a fraction of the price. And since we’re for-profit, forcharity, we will be giving back the money to those provincial hospitals, those who don’t have mammogram machines, so they can buy even the basic X-Ray machines,” concludes Dr. San Agustin. BREAST CARE
Dr. San Agustin issues these firm reminders for every woman.
Age 35 is the baseline to get a breast examination. But once someone turns 40 years old, it is time to get an annual digital mammography.
For any woman, however, with a family member with history of breast cancer, the baseline is moved to 10 years younger, so breast examinations should be done starting 25 years old.
He remarks, “Nobody is supposed to develop breast cancer at 35! We have to let go of the fatalistic attitude, God knows, God is in control, as it doesn’t work that way. We have to help ourselves where we can.”