In the Spotlight

Women’s services at Baylor Garland.

From breast care to childbirth to bone health, Baylor Medical Center at Garland recognizes the unique health care needs of women throughout their lives. That’s why Baylor Garland offers the Women’s Center and the Baylor Breast Center, two special places where women take center stage.

For Unforgettable Debuts
In its comfortable, freshly redecorated surroundings, the Women’s Center at Baylor Garland is like “one-stop shopping” for women who are expecting. Services include obstetrics, gynecology, LDR (labor, delivery, recovery) rooms, a nursery and a level 3 neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

At the NICU, babies born at 28 weeks’ gestation or later are treated with tender loving care. Neonatal nurse practitioners and neonatologists provide advanced life-support services and technologies for tiny, premature and seriously ill newborns. The specialized nurse practitioners who are on site 24/7 follow a philosophy of developmental care that encourages babies to achieve optimal health as soon as possible.

For moms-to-be facing high-risk pregnancies, perinatologists (maternal-fetal medicine specialists) are on call in the center’s antepartum unit, and genetic counseling also is available. Since breastfeeding is vital to newborn health, a lactation nurse in the Women’s Center provides breastfeeding education and solutions for new moms and babies who need some help mastering the technique.

“Having all these services in one location at the Women’s Center is not only convenient for the patients, it also allows the physicians to provide more streamlined and efficient care,” says Darlene S. Taylor-Thompson, M.D., medical staff director at Baylor Garland. “For example, an obstetrician can more easily arrange for a patient to consult with the perinatologist when his or her offi ces are right down the hall.”

Ready for Your Close-up
Last fall, the Baylor Breast Center debuted a major expansion and renovation. Even more exciting, “part of the renovation included becoming a fully digital breast center,” says Trudy Sellars, R.D., M.S., supervisor of the Breast Center at Baylor Garland.

Two Hologic^® digital mammography units now are available at the Breast Center. Digital mammograms offer many advantages over film: Digital images can be magnified, rotated, darkened or lightened for better examination; they can be electronically transmitted to physicians for review, expediting diagnosis and treatment; and you can say good-bye to film, developing time, chemicals and film storage. With built-in computer-aided detection, the system also automatically flags areas on the image that need closer scrutiny by the radiologist.

But the Breast Center offers more than mammography. Additional services include ultrasound breast examination, ultrasound-guided breast biopsy, stereotactic breast biopsy and needle localization. If a mammogram indicates a suspicious area, the woman can come right back to the Breast Center for her diagnostic mammography and biopsy, if necessary.

Women at risk for osteoporosis also will find fast and convenient bone density testing at the Baylor Breast Center. This painless procedure takes only a few minutes and measures the density of bones in the spine, hip or wrist.

The redesign also added dressing rooms and an interior waiting lounge where women in their gowns can wait for their procedures, enjoying coffee and television, without having to go back out to the main waiting room. A new workstation for the imaging technologists expedites the interpretation of exams, opening up more time for direct patient care.

“The way the new department is configured allows for comfortable waiting areas and enhanced patient flow, and it gives us more quality time with each patient,” Sellars says.

Encore!
Feedback on the new Breast Center among both patients and staff has been overwhelmingly positive, and a lot of that has to do with the personalized approach.

“We get to know our patients and build relationships with them,” Sellars says. “We have women who come in every year for their mammogram, and it’s nice for women who need follow-up diagnostic mammography or biopsy to be able to come right back here for their care, with caregivers they already know.” Both the Baylor Breast Center and the Women’s Center at Baylor Garland deserve to take a bow.

By Deborah Paddison

Call (972) 487-5294 to schedule a tour of the Women’s Center at Baylor Garland and receive a FREE tote bag. To make an appointment for a mammogram, call (972) 487-5293.