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Overview
The Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute (MMCCI) Breast Care Center is a state-of-the-art, full-service facility, providing comprehensive breast health care. The Breast Care Center provides screening, early detection, diagnostic imaging services, specialist consultation for benign breast conditions and treatment of breast cancer in a warm, welcoming and patient and family centered environment.
We value an active partnership by:
- Embracing patients, families and health care providers with dignity and respect
- Promoting education and research, including clinical trials
- Involving community participation and support
Coordinated, patient and family centered care
Our team participates in weekly conferences to review data and develop treatment plans that are best for the patient. The breast care team collaborates on individual cases, reviewing radiology imaging, pathology specimens, and surgical assessment. Team collaboration and discussion for optimal treatment planning is then reviewed with the patient and family to keep them well informed, comfortable, confident, and knowing what to expect every step of the way.
Your health is our focus. The Breast Care Center offers a unique resource and care environment, staffed by leaders in the field.
Our nursing team is made up of exceptional nurses committed to the area of breast health and breast cancer.
Breast Nurse Practitioner
Our breast nurse practitioner is an Adult Nurse Practitioner, certified through the American Credentialing Service. She provides education and clinical breast exams to women with breast issues, at high risk, or with highly suspicious breast problems. The nurse practitioner provides assessment, orders appropriate imaging consults with radiologists, and works closely with breast surgeons to efficiently serve patients. The nurse practitioner oversees the care of patients at high risk for developing breast cancer, meets with newly diagnosed patients, and follows them through post-op and recovery.
Equally important, the Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute Breast Care Center also provides streamlined access to a range of support services locally and state wide to help patients and their families deal with the physical, emotional, financial and logistical impact of cancer treatment. This careful attention to each patient's personal needs - and those of his or her family - ensures that no one should ever feel alone through a breast cancer diagnosis.
Leading-edge diagnostic and screening services
The MMCCI Breast Care Center provides screening mammograms and clinical breast exams to aid in screening and the early detection of breast cancer. Upon discovery of a breast lump or an abnormal mammogram, immediate follow-up - usually the same day - is provided, and a comprehensive array of diagnostic resources is available:
- The most advanced diagnostic imaging modalities, including full field digital mammography, ultrasound, and breast MRI, as well as lymphoscintigraphy for lymph node mapping
- Nonsurgical stereotactic and ultrasound guided breast biopsy to evaluate breast abnormalities, performed by diagnostic radiologist breast specialists
- Interpretation by diagnostic radiologists with specialty training in breast imaging
- Sentinel lymph node biopsy by experienced breast surgeons
Awarded Accreditation by the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers
 The Breast Care Center at Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute has been awarded a full, three-year accreditation by the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC), administered by the American College of Surgeons, in 2010. MMC is the only hospital in the state to receive the prestigious accreditation.
Earning the NAPBC accreditation means an organization excels in patient care, and has met or exceeded standards in six areas: center leadership, clinical management, research, community outreach, professional education, and quality improvement. Centers must be compliant with 27 standards within these six areas. The Breast Care Center at Maine Medical Center Cancer Institute was 100 percent compliant.
Comprehensive treatment resources
Treatment options for breast cancer include radiation therapy (radiation oncology), surgery and medical oncology. Services are located at the Maine Medical Center Scarborough Campus.
- Surgical Oncology: Depending on tumor location, size, grade and node status, surgical options include breast-conserving lumpectomy, quadrantectomy and mastectomy
- Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery: Before undergoing mastectomy or other surgical treatment, patients can explore options for immediate or delayed reconstructive breast surgery
- Medical Oncology: The latest, most effective standard-of-care chemotherapy, hormonal treatment and trastuzumab (Herceptin®) regimens for all stages of breast cancer
- Radiation Oncology: Includes conventional external beam radiation and, for appropriate patients, HDR partial breast irradiation, a five-day targeted radiation therapy that places the radiation source inside the lumpectomy cavity
- Genetic Counseling: At the Cancer Risk and Prevention Clinic, the genetic counselor and medical oncologist can help guide risk prevention treatment decisions
- Clinical Trials: providing access to the latest treatment options
- Establishment of long term survivorship care plan
The MMCCI Breast Care Center works collaboratively with the oncology specialists at Maine Center for Cancer Medicine (MCCM), where dozens of active clinical trials are underway. All patients with breast cancer are carefully screened and, when appropriate, offered the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial. The advantage of participating in a clinical trial is that patients may receive newer treatments that are not yet available to the general public and which may be more effective. By participating in a clinical trial, patients also will be helping others who are diagnosed with cancer in the future.
Exceptional education and support
The MMCCI Breast Care Center provides an exceptional array of breast cancer education and support resources, including:
- For women with a family history of breast cancer or other special concerns, risk assessment, genetic testing for the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 gene, and genetic counseling are available by referral to the MMC Cancer Risk and Prevention Clinic
- Individual and group education on breast self-examination
- Center staff provides up-to-date information on community-based breast cancer support groups as well as local, state and national advocacy and support organizations
- Educational literature on breast cancer is available at the Center. The Pink Tote provided to each patient includes a wealth of information and educational resources, the right information at the right time.
- Survivorship care plans are given to patients who have completed their treatment. These provide a summary of treatment received and the expected follow-up in the future.
Types of breast conditions and breast cancer treated
Maine Medical Center Cancer Insitute's breast specialists treat all types of breast conditions, including:
- Atypia
- In situ (or non-invasive) breast cancer
- Invasive ductal breast cancer
- Invasive lobular breast cancer
- Inflammatory breast cancer
- Paget's disease
- Metastatic breast cancer
- Nipple discharge
- Breast pain
- Fibrocystic breast syndrome
- Short term follow-up of benign biopsy
- Short term follow-up of radiographic changes
- Family history of breast cancer
- Patient with benign breast history
- Mastitis/abscess
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