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This hub is for every woman who has been invited for breast screening and wants to know what it’s all about. It’s also for her relatives, friends and carers who might be supporting her and need to understand how best to do this. The site enables you to talk to other women on our breast screening forum and practitioners from the NHS breast screening service as well as providing lots of useful written information, videos and images.
We know that what you find on the hub will be what you want because it has been designed by the breast screening community themselves through a year-long process of research, talking to each other about breast screening and scouring the Internet for high quality information. It is not just a collection of bits and pieces but a well-researched collection of all the things women attending for mammography have said are essential.
The breast screening community who created the hub (some of who you can see in the picture on the right) are women from all walks of life. This includes women from the screening population, mammography staff, university lecturers and researchers. Women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer have also provided essential information for the hub design. Many of these women have been diagnosed through their screening mammogram and therefore have insider knowledge about what information is needed at various stages of the process. This site also contains our breast screening forum chat.
We do not believe in pressurising any women into attending for breast screening. Instead we want to provide a forum for discussion of the most relevant and up-to-date evidence that will then allow you to make a choice for yourself.
Radiography Team of the Year Award
The work of the WoMMeN team was acknowledged when they were awarded the Society and College of Radiographers team of the year 2016! We are extremely proud of this award and are extremely grateful for all the support provided by the following people to make this possible:
- University of Salford
- Nightingale Centre, University Hospital of South Manchester
- The Bolton Breast Unit
- East Lancashire Breast Screening Service
- The College of Radiographers (CoRIPS scheme)
- Cancer Research UK (National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative)
- The LORIS trial
- All the service users on our research team but in particular Jo Taylor and Liz Morton, who are remarkable and inspiring women.
The AHP Awards
The WoMMeN team were also nominated in the Advancing Healthcare Awards 2017. These awards are in their 11th year, and are prized by Allied Health professionals. They celebrate innovation in the Allied Health community:
“Our aim is to recognise and reward projects and professionals that lead innovative healthcare practice and make a real difference to patients’ lives. The awards are open to allied health professionals, healthcare scientists and those who work alongside them in support roles. The awards are unique in that they are UK-wide and cover all these professional and specialists groups whose achievements so often go unnoticed.”
Although we didn’t win, we were honoured to be nominated and included in the distinguished list of award nominees. A well deserved ‘well done’ to all the winners and nominees – let’s keep the good work up!
5 Comments
Imran Shaikh · February 7, 2017 at 2:17 pm
Great
Maggie · May 10, 2017 at 5:54 am
My first mammogram was 6 months before I then was found to have stage 3 duct all breastcancer I would like this mammogram relooked at as I feel there must have been earlier detection
iOS it because they had no mammgram to compare it with , I am in health prevention my self and work for NHS I am disappointed the mammogram alone didn’t pick up this aggressive cancer which neede chemo them mastectomy with 5 out of 22 nodes involved and radiotherapy I am a lucky one and treatment seems successful but early days only a year since diagnosis
How do I go about having that first mammogram looked at and why don’t they do a ultrasound with your first mammogram as my ultrasound 6 months later and on same day as second mammogram showed so much more than an inconclusive mammogram
Beverley Scragg · May 10, 2017 at 10:43 am
Hello Maggie
I’m really sorry to hear that, you must be feeling very unsure as to what has happened there, although it’s great that treatment seems successful so far.
If your breast cancer happens in the interval between screens, (so that’s any time in the three years between mammograms), then it is termed an ‘interval cancer’. All interval cancers must be looked at again by the breast screening team as part of a national audit, where they look at the mammogram when the cancer happened, and compare it with the screening mammogram to see whether it was visible or not at the time.
If it wasn’t, it might be that it was a fast growing grade 3 cancer that wasn’t there at the time, or it might be a cancer that couldn’t be seen at all, ever, on a mammogram (this happens more often with a type of cancer called a ‘lobular’ tumour), or it might be that dense breast tissue stopped it from being seen.
If it was able to be seen, it might be that it just didn’t look like a tumour – maybe it looked like a cyst, or maybe it was just missed by the two film readers. This doesn’t happen very often at all, but it does happen.
I would say, then, Maggie, that your interval cancer has already been looked at again, but you would have to contact your screening unit by letter to ask them to share their thoughts with you.
Although it’s true that ultrasound can show cancers sometimes when mammograms don’t, ultrasound isn’t recommended as a screening technique because it isn’t very efficient at showing the very early signs of small breast cancers. Not yet, anyway.
I hope that helps you understand a bit more about ‘interval cancers’, Maggie – ask us anything else if you need to.
Geraldine Shires · May 10, 2017 at 12:41 pm
Hi Maggie. Very sorry to hear about your diagnosis but glad the treatment seems to be going well. Was your first mammogram a screening one? As Bev says, ultrasound would not be routinely used for a screening mammogram. I’m presuming you later found a lump or noticed some changes in your breast and that’s why you had another mammogram? If you present with a symptom it would be standard practice to have an ultrasound in addition to a mammogram but as Bev says it wouldn’t be recommended as a screening technique. Any other questions please let us know
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