Optimal Breast Cancer Screening – What PCPs Need to Know
Paula B. Gordon, OC, OBC, MD, FRCPC, FSBI
Topics: Breast Cancer, Screening
Details
Objectives
- Discuss the benefits of early detection, how and why we try to find breast cancer as early as possible, and the possible risks of screening.
- Describe the Canadian randomized trial of women aged 40-49, done from 1980-1988, and demonstrate the flaws and protocol deviations inthat study, which render it invalid.
- Show modern research supporting screening starting at 40, and supplemental screening for women with dense breasts.
Faculty
Paula B. Gordon OC, OBC, MD, FRCPC, FSBI
Founding Medical Director, Sadie Diamond Breast Program, BC Women’s Hospital
Dr. Paula Gordon is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of British Columbia. She is a passionate clinician, researcher and educator.
In the 1980’s her research on ultrasound-guided breast biopsies led to it becoming a standard of care worldwide. This procedure enabled accurate diagnosis of breast masses, which had previously required surgery and allowed women to forego surgery for non-cancerous abnormalities.
Her research in 1995 was the first to show that ultrasound could find cancers missed on mammograms. This has led to a paradigm change in the management of screening women with dense breasts that began in the USA in 2009, but is now spreading to Canada, the UK, Asia, Australia and Europe.
With the acquisition of tomosynthesis, Dr. Gordon arranged for Vancouver to be among the first Canadian sites to join TMIST: the tomosynthesis mammographic imaging screening trial, an FDA-funded multi-centre trial, donating hundreds of hours participating in the planning and preparation of the trial as a Canadian lead-in site.
Dr. Gordon is widely appreciated for her mentoring of medical students, radiology residents and fellows in breast imaging, as well as teaching her individual patients and the public. She is a popular instructor at "Hands-on workshops" at the Radiologic Society of North America where radiologists learn how to perform needle biopsies and other procedures with ultrasound guidance, and has done so every year since they were first introduced in 1993.
She is a sought-after speaker and moderator and panel member, and has given hundreds of invited lectures locally, nationally and internationally, as well as participating on and chairing scientific panels throughout North America.
She volunteers as Medical Advisor to Dense Breasts Canada and DenseBreast-Info.org, and as Vice President of the Board of the Canucks for Kids Fund.
She has received a Killam Teaching Prize from the University of British Columbia, Queen Elizabeth Diamond and Platinum Jubilee Medals, the Prix d’Excellence award from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and the UBC Radiology Clinical Faculty Award for Excellence in Research/Discovery/Innovation. She was invested in the Order of British Columbia in 2013.
In December 2022, Dr. Gordon was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada.