TidalHealth educates public during Breast Cancer Awareness Month

SALISBURY, Md. – Breast cancer can be scary, but it’s not a death sentence.

Medical Director at TidalHealth’s Breast Center, Dr. David Sechler, said when a person is diagnosed with breast cancer, their doctor works alongside them, creating a treatment plan that best fits the patient.

“Typically, the process begins with surgery to remove the tumor,” Dr. Sechler said. “We’ll explain to them that a lot of the times we can do it with a small, simple incision to remove the breast tumor that way.”

After a patient undergoes surgery, the best-case scenario would be that the tumor is completely removed, and the patient is cancer free. But if it spreads throughout the body, Dr. Sechler said further treatment steps are taken.

“For chemotherapy, typically the indications would be if we found that the tumor has spread into a lymph node, that often triggers the decision that we might have to add chemotherapy, with the idea that chemotherapy would treat cancer that’s spread beyond the breast or the armpit and elsewhere in the body,” Dr. Sechler said.

During this Breast Cancer Awareness Month, director of strategic communications at TidalHealth, Roger Follebout, has been using TidalHealth’s podcast platform to raise awareness on this treatable disease, and encourage women to seek support.

“1 in 8 women this year and every year in the US are going to hear that they have breast cancer,” Follebout said. “Our role as communicators, and public relations individuals that are working for the health system, is not to put hands on the patient, but really to help share that information to bring in the leaders like Dr. Sechler and have them share that information that is vital.”

For preventative measures, Dr. Sechler said you should get a mammogram once a year, especially if breast cancer runs in your family.

“We want to start screening mammograms 10 years younger than the earliest family member who have been diagnosed with breast cancer,” Dr. Sechler said.