MEDIA RELEASE

Adelaide, Australia

05 March, 2018

Renowned Adelaide Breast Cancer Specialist, Dr Stephen Birrell MBBS PhD FRACS, is currently touring the country speaking to Australia’s General Practitioners about a critical,  unmanaged women’s health concern, mammographic breast density and its association with increased breast cancer risk and missed breast cancer during screening.

Women with high mammographic breast density are up to 10 times more likely to develop breast cancer than women with low breast density, depending on their other individual risk factors and can reduce the ability for a mammogram to detect a cancer by up to 50%.

Although a hot topic in women’s health across the United States and Europe, mammographic breast density and its impact on the management of breast disease has, unfortunately, been largely undiscussed in Australia. As awareness about this important risk factor continues to grow, Dr Birrell’s presentations provide attending delegates with the most current information on how to manage, and treat, high mammographic breast density and consequently how to reduce breast cancer risk in affected patients.

Dr Birrell’s well-received keynote speech at the Sydney and Melbourne HealthEd Updates were attended by over 1,000  General Practitioners.  He will be presenting in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth in subsequent months.

Dr Birrell is a breast cancer specialist and internationally recognized expert in the field of hormonal management of breast disease.  His early research was seminal in explaining how conventional hormone replacement therapy increased the risk of developing breast cancer.  Dr Birrell was the founder of Australia’s first public and private multidisciplinary breast cancer clinics, a model that is now accepted as the only way to access breast disease.  He is the Medical Director of Wellend Health, a state-of-the-art women’s health specialist clinic that has individualised treatments and diagnostic tools that are currently available only at the Wellend clinic.