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Dyersburg Regional Medical Center is pampering women who visit its new digital mammography suite.

As women enter the room, they receive warm neck wraps to ease any tension in their neck and shoulders. They wear crisp white robes. They sit on brown leather chairs, reading magazines and listening to the soothing sound of a wall-mounted waterfall. Even the soft-green wall color and the dimmable lights help women relax and feel pampered.

Shelly Ward, a registered mammography technologist, said the spa-like approach is designed to put women at ease. Women who are relaxed are less likely to feel discomfort during the mammogram procedure, she said.

Women may enjoy the restful indulgence, but the radiologists and the mammography technologists like the sharper images that come with digital mammography.

Martha True, also a registered mammography technologist, said digital mammograms provide a better image quality than traditional mammograms on film - especially on younger women with dense breast tissue.

Radiologists may enlarge, rotate, adjust the contrast and zoom to better examine specific areas of the mammogram.

The hospital acquired the digital mammography equipment a couple of months ago and has been putting the finishing touches on the new suite. Marketing Director Judy Boehmler, who chose the suite's décor, was the hospital's first digital mammography patient on Aug. 19. The pampering effects, such as the neck wraps, robes and bottled water in the spacious changing room, were added Oct. 1 in observance of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

"The hospital administration is continually trying to add to the technology. It is continuing to try to offer better quality services to people in the community," Boehmler said.

The digital mammography suite is just one of a number of changes being made in the hospital this year. An old surgical wing was gutted and is now being rebuilt with 15 private patient rooms. The obstetrics and gynecology unit was renovated, too.

The hospital showed off its new mammography suite Oct. 11 during a Healthy Woman program on breast health. Dr. Rwanda Campbell of the Dyersburg Regional Women's Center presented a program on the importance of regular breast exams, warning signs for breast cancer and other types of breast diseases. Tours of the new suite followed the talk.

According to the American Cancer Society, one in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. Mammograms often catch suspicious spots before they are large enough to be felt in a routine breast examination.

Current recommendations call for a baseline mammogram at 35 and annual mammograms beginning at age 40.

While most of the patients using the mammography suite will be women, True estimated the unit sees five to 10 men a year. Breast cancer is rare in men, but True said she has encountered four men with breast cancer in the 15 years she's been working at DRMC.

Men who visit the mammography unit also will be pampered with neck wraps and robes.

Source: Dyersburg State Gazette

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