Choosing a seed localization device: hear from the surgeon who has tried them all

During this fascinating discussion, Dr Borgen told us about his passion for chairing the annual Miami Breast event and took a trip through time to speak about his decision to leave the powerhouse breast center of Memorial Sloan Kettering to lead the Maimonides breast revolution.

We then talked through his experiences with seed localization technologies – with Dr Borgen having trialled all of the leading devices – and heard why he believes Magseed® trumps them all.

Plus, listen to why he’s excited about implementing Magtrace® alongside Magseed® to help reduce unnecessary surgeries for his patients.

“It’s intensely case based, so almost every lecture that’s given, there’s a clinical scenario given, and then the professor addresses it. It’s a very social event. When we ask people, “Why do you go to Miami?” It’s not just, “I like Miami in March.” It’s, “I like meeting these people I like, bouncing cases off of them. I like talking about technique.”

With Miami Breast entering its 37th year, it’s fair to say the event has established itself as one of the world’s leading breast meetings.

Dr Borgen told us how it’s unlike most other meetings, encouraging practical collaborative thinking – something that didn’t change this year, despite moving online.

Many would find it difficult to imagine leaving a center with the prestige of Memorial Sloan Kettering, but Dr Borgen told us how making the decision to move to a borough with no cancer centers was the challenge he felt he needed.

He set about bringing together a team of physicians that weren’t just extremely talented, but also cared about patient outcomes first and foremost.

“It’s been a great second act and I’m very proud of what we’ve done in Brooklyn. We’re hiring our fourth breast surgeon this year. We treated 40 women in 2008 and we’ll treat about 900 this year.”

To enable his team to treat so many more patients, Dr Borgen and Maimonides have been pioneers in adopting new technologies, particularly when it comes to seed localization. Speaking about his experience, he told us how he considers wire localization to be an ’embarrassment’ and emphasized the importance of constantly evolving treatment options.

So they set about trialling all that the wireless market had to offer – but that wasn’t to be an entirely pain free experience either.

Fortunately, Dr Borgen came across the Magseed®. He told us that it’s been the perfect solution for their needs, providing them with direction to tumors with precision accuracy and they’re now finding it to be has ideal for clipping nodes in neoadjuvant patients too.

“We love the sensitivity of the detector, and how precisely you can plan your incision… we’ve been so happy. Let me tell you, once you’ve driven the Magseed detector, you’re just not going to want to do something different”.

Adopting Magseed® and the Sentimag® platform has opened up Maimonides to a whole new world of treatment options, none more so than performing non-radioactive SLNB with the Magtrace® lymphatic tracer.

One of the greatest battles for many hospitals is building and maintaining the facilities required to deliver the ‘Gold Standard’ of care for SLNB. This issue is removed completely with Magtrace®, which has been demonstrated to be non-inferior alternative across many studies. Dr Borgen told us how it could help his center going forwards.

“During COVID, our patients didn’t want to go to the nuclear medicine department. They just wanted to go to the ambulatory surgery center, so we really are keen on looking at this”

Battling the many complications of the ongoing pandemic has meant Dr Borgen and his team have had to put evaluations on hold for now, but he told us how excited he is about the opportunities ahead for his team and their patients in the future.

Attending ASBrS 2021? Join Dr Borgen and a world-leading panel including Dr Anne Peled, Dr Abigail Caudle, Professor Alastair Thompson and Mr Rajiv Dave as they discuss the latest Magseed® data. Click here to sign up.

Enjoyed this latest episode? Watch more interviews from our first series here.