Benign Breast Tumor? Freeze It

New procedure offers women a pain-free alternative to surgery

A new treatment helped them both

Linda Jo Heffner (left) and Lori Costello chose cryoablation for treatment of their fibroadenomas. Costello, 42, of Catasauqua opted for the new approach because she’d had breast reduction surgery and wanted to avoid additional scarring. “It’s peace of mind having the lump removed, knowing it’s not going to be growing,” she says.

Your Community, Your Hospital

Cryoablation, the new treatment for benign breast tumors, also may become an option for women with cancer. Lehigh Valley Hospital is one of 30 sites nationally in a clinical trial that will assess cryoablation for treating small breast cancers. It’s just one of dozens of research trials at our hospital, in every area from the Burn Center to rehabilitation to the in vitro fertilization lab. A sampling:

• Cancer—Targeted melanoma treatments, new prevention approaches for prostate and breast cancer, and nanotechnology to deliver cancer drugs
• Spine—Safety and effectiveness of multiple (two) adjacent artificial discs
• Heart—Some 25 studies by our Cardiovascular Research Institute in such areas as anemia and heart failure
• Trauma—New anticoagulants and new ventilator strategies including liquid ventilation

Research is a vital function for an “academic community hospital” like ours. It helps attract the finest professionals to our community and brings the very latest medical knowledge to our patients.

Like most women, Linda Jo Heffner feared the worst when her gynecologist found a lump in her breast. When the 57-year-old Macungie woman learned the lump was noncancerous, she says, “it was such an emotional relief.”

Heffner had a fibroadenoma, a fibrous tumor most common in women ages 18-35. “As many as 20 percent of women have fibroadenomas,” says gynecologist Alexandria George, D.O., of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network. “We don’t know what causes them, but they do increase with pregnancy and with hormone therapy.”

Most fibroadenomas needn’t be removed; they can just be observed, says George’s colleague, surgical oncologist Aaron Bleznak, M.D. “They can’t become cancer, but on occasion they can be tender, they’re sensitive to hormone changes, and they can grow bigger over time,” he says. “It’s appropriate to treat those that are symptomatic or enlarging, but many women don’t know about any alternatives to surgery.”

Heffner was uncomfortable with both a “watch and wait” approach and surgical removal. Happily, she had another option: a new, pain-free treatment called cryoablation. It’s a 20-minute office procedure that uses extreme cold energy to destroy tissue. Guided by ultrasound, the surgeon inserts a thin probe into the center of the tumor, then freezes it. Within six months the tumor breaks up and is reabsorbed by the body. “The advantage over traditional surgery is that there’s no cutting, scarring or pain,” says Bleznak, who along with his colleague, surgical oncologist Heiwon Chung, M.D., is certified to perform the procedure.

“Some women still choose surgery because they either haven’t heard about cryoablation or don’t want a tumor sitting in their breast for months and prefer to have it extracted immediately,” Chung says.

For Heffner, the procedure dissolved her tumor along with an enduring fear of cancer, the disease that took her husband’s life. At the time her own lump was discovered, she’d had only one mammogram in her life; she now schedules them yearly. “Every little bump or lump you get doesn’t necessarily mean you have cancer,” she says. Indeed, according to the American Cancer Society, nearly 80 percent of breast lumps are benign.

Want to Know More about breast lumps, breast self-exams or breast cancer risk? Click on the links in the column on the right side of this page.

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