The new Kapiolani Breast Center has a view from its fifth-floor offices of the Artesian Plaza at 1907 S. Beretania St. Dr. Laura Weldon Hoque, above, is the medical director.
Breast cancer patients
offered a ‘one-stop shop’
Kathie Andre was in and out of the new Kapiolani Breast Center for a mammogram in about 15 minutes.
"I thought they were very efficient," she said yesterday. "They try to make you feel very comfortable."
Andre, a former Honolulu resident working as a U.S. Defense Department special education child assessment specialist in Germany, said she has a mammogram every summer when she comes home to visit her mother, Mary Andre.
"The new facilities are lovely," she said, after visiting the Kapiolani Breast Center, the first of its kind in Hawaii offering comprehensive breast health services, education and counseling.
The center opened in May on the fifth floor of the Artesian Plaza, 1907 S. Beretania St. The Kapiolani Women's Center, where Andre formerly had mammograms, is on the first floor.
Dr. Laura Weldon Hoque, the Breast Center's medical director, said the goal was to bring specialists together for a "one-stop shop."
Kapiolani patients no longer have to trek to different doctors and clinics for complete breast health services, she said. Specialists consult with patients at the center, and meet twice a month in conferences to discuss treatment options.
Hoque said her next goal is to establish a coordinated program for women at high risk for breast cancer. New York has such a clinic and is detecting cancer earlier, she said.
Roughly 750 women statewide are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, with about 200 treated at Kapiolani, according to Marge Obrecht, nurse manager of the Breast Center.
Although many specialists are associated with the center, Hoque is the only surgeon and is hoping to recruit others.
Hoque said she started building a team for women's breast services about four years ago but "opening the center was the biggest step. Now we have a facility for doctors to come to."
Michelle Meredith, executive director of the new center, said the $10 million to $12 million center was designed to provide state-of-the-art breast health care for women in a "homey" environment.
Regular breast screening is done on one side; diagnostic tests following up on suspicious mammograms are on the other side. Both have comfortable furnishings, etched glass, art and coffee stations.
The center has the only digital mammography system on Oahu other than Kuakini Medical Center, as well as the Image Checker computer-aided detection system.
Hoque noted that digital images are done in half the time of film screening systems. Patients are in the machine five minutes, she said.
Dr. Bryan J. Gushiken, breast radiologist, said digital breast screening technology hasn't proven to find more cancers than X-ray screening.
But like a digital camera versus a film camera, he said digital images are processed faster, and are easier to display, store, copy and manipulate.
Women generally learn the same day if their mammogram is abnormal.
Nancy Harada, 48, of Manoa, has been going to the Kapiolani Women's Center for 10 years for mammograms but will have the next one at the new Breast Center.
She recently had a needle biopsy for calcium deposits in her left breast that were benign. "It was a painless procedure," she said, noting she previously had a surgical biopsy in her right breast at the Queen's Medical Center.
Harada said she's talked to her two teenage daughters about mammograms. "It's uncomfortable but doesn't last very long. It's one of those unpleasant things in life you have to take care of, like going to the dentist."
Kapiolani Breast Center
www.kapiolani.org/keeping/hg_cond_breastcan/hg_all.html
