Road trip can save lives

Mammography units bring screening to rural areas

SEAN CAPRI
AHS Communications

Two mobile digital mammography units are on the road, making cancer screening accessible to rural areas throughout the province.

The 53-foot trailers will visit more than 100 Alberta communities and screen more than 25,000 women each year. They began touring rural Alberta in mid-July and in just one week screened more than 300 women.

Carolyn Baraniuk lives in a rural area outside of High River and has been using the mobile screening service for the past seven years.

"It's a great, great program," she says. "If this program wasn't there I wouldn't have gone for a mammogram. There's no way I would do it in the city, no way. I'm so grateful to the province for this program and I truly believe it has saved lives."

Baraniuk says a trip to the city for a mammogram would take her at least three hours; one hour driving each way and another hour for the test.

"That is a half-day commitment for something that most women would think isn't that important," says Baraniuk. "There's no history of breast cancer in their family and they don't show any symptoms so they won't bother to get tested. But when the service comes to them, it just makes it so easy."

The trailers, which are usually open from 7 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., are set up in parking lots of health centres, hospitals, recreation centres and shopping malls. The units stay in a community anywhere from one day to two weeks, depending on the population of the town and its surrounding area. Each unit travels with two mammography technologists while volunteers in each community act as greeters.

Women are encouraged to book an appointment when the trailer comes to their area by calling 1-800-667-0604. Newspaper articles and advertisements, information in physicians' offices, posters throughout the community and recall letters for those who are due for their mammogram are all used to communicate when the trailer will be in a particular area.

One of the mobile screening units covers the northern half of the province while the other travels the southern half. The northern trailer has already visited Fort Saskatchewan and is scheduled to be in Redwater, Wainwright, Killam and Whitecourt. The Southern Unit has been to Morinville and High River and will be in Nanton, Vulcan and Claresholm in the coming weeks.

The trailers replace three vans which have crisscrossed the province since 1997 providing film screen mammography services.

The trailers contain digital equipment which produces images that can be viewed immediately. The images are sent to radiologists at the Cross Cancer Institute and the Screentest bases at Kingsway Garden Mall in Edmonton and at the Holy Cross Hospital in Calgary where they can then use software to help interpret the digital mammograms.

The digital pictures are better than traditional film images in detecting cancers in women under the age of 50 or in those with dense breast tissue.

"Film technology is becoming obsolete so we couldn't have continued with the old equipment much longer," says Fred Ashbury, head of cancer epidemiology, prevention and screening for Alberta Health Services "This enables us to provide seamless service and grow a program without dealing with aging equipment breaking down."

Screening is very important in the fight against breast cancer as early detection is the key to beating the disease.

Joan Hauber, manager of Screentest says the goal of the program is to decrease mortality from breast cancer by screening at least 70 per cent of the population.

While the number of the diagnosed breast cancer cases has increased, breast cancer death rates have declined more than 30 per cent in Alberta since 1989.

Women aged 40 to 49 should be screened annually while women 50 and over should be screened every two years.

The trailers, which are painted to resemble large travel trunks, also contain examination rooms that will be able to accommodate future screening for cervical and colorectal cancers.

"These trailers are larger than life and make prevention accessible and inviting," says Alberta Cancer Foundation Chief Executive Linda Mickelson.

The Alberta Cancer Foundation contributed $11 million toward the trailers. The money was raised at Weekend to End Breast Cancer events from 2006 until this year.

"I'm very excited to see this service available to women in small towns," says breast cancer survivor Twila Stafford, a participant in Edmonton's event in 2009.

"It's so empowering as a woman to know the money we raised in the Weekend to End Breast Cancer is going towards something so amazing."

For more information visit screeningforlife.ca or call 1-800-667-0604.