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Pam Naeve, of Clinton, has twice been diagnosed with breast cancer. She urges women to schedule mammograms to assist with early diagnosis.

A Genius 3D mammography machine that Ron Blount installed in Eastern Iowa.

Pam Naeve, of Clinton, has twice been diagnosed with breast cancer. She urges women to schedule mammograms to assist with early diagnosis.

A Genius 3D mammography machine that Ron Blount installed in Eastern Iowa.

Editor’s note: Each Thursday in October, the Clinton Herald will publish stories of local interest in conjunction with Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Today is the first installment in the series.

CLINTON – Pam Naeve, of Clinton, had put off going in for a mammogram for quite some time.

At 37 years old though, she felt a lump in her breast and finally decided to see her doctor. Shortly after, she saw a surgeon and underwent a breast removal. Chemotherapy followed, as did radiation.

“The whole nine yards,” she says.

Naeve then found, through genetic testing, that she was positive for the BRCA gene, a gene mutation that results in a heightened risk of developing cancer.

She began getting yearly mammograms as well as yearly MRI tests. Then, almost 20 years after her first breast cancer diagnosis, Naeve was diagnosed with a different type of breast cancer.

Because of the gene defect she’d found that she has, Naeve again opted for breast removal. She again went through chemotherapy treatment afterward, but today, “everything is good,” she says.

According to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, every 48 seconds someone in the world dies of breast cancer; but recent advancements in mammography technology promise greater rates of survival.

Radiologists used to examine breasts using general purpose X-ray tubes to produce direct exposure films low in contrast and without compressing the breast. That continued until modern mammography methods were developed in the late 1960s.

The American Cancer Society began officially recommending mammograms as a method of breast cancer screening in 1976. Their popularity increased through the 1980s.

While mammography has long been considered to be the most reliable method of early detection, the Susan G. Komen Foundation reported that improvements in early detection and treatment contributed to a 42% decline in the breast cancer death rate in the U.S. between 1989 and 2019.

In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reports regular mammograms can sometimes find breast cancer up to three years before it can be felt.

Area hospitals in the past several years have been upgrading their mammography equipment, including MercyOne Clinton’s Imaging & Radiology Center and Genesis Medical Center in DeWitt. Rather than the mammography machines women have come to know that produced 2D images, both of these locations now utilize 3D mammography.

The $319,000 piece of equipment was installed in DeWitt’s Genesis Medical Center in 2018 by Ron Blount, field service engineer with Brown’s Medical Imaging, who is responsible for tending to a geographic area containing 120 different mammography machines.

He explains that along with conventional 2D mammography, in which two pictures are taken of each breast, these new machines utilize 15 images of the breast taken at different angles. These are then used to create one image in which, he says, “you can actually see what’s behind a mass.”

Blount says another significant difference between 2D machines and 3D mammography is that instead of the compression of the breast by a flat paddle, a curved paddle is used, which allows for a better view of what’s around or behind any mass that may be in question and, therefore, a greater accuracy of readings. Increased accuracy also translates to a decrease in patient callbacks for further testing.

“It decreases the amount of callbacks so the patient isn’t exposed to any more radiation than what they have to be,” he said.

Naeve also encourages women to get their mammograms.

“It is very important to do mammograms,” Naeve stresses, because even though she went through the experiences she did, she says, “It could have been much worse.”

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