Success Stories

At Montclair Breast Center, we have perfected the early detection of breast cancer.

Between June 2011 and November 2023, 100% of Montclair Breast Center’s established patients — those having consecutive annual screening mammograms performed here — who were found to have breast cancer were diagnosed at the most treatable Stage 0, Stage 1 and very rarely Stage 2.

In 1998, Montclair Breast Center became an out-of-network breast center. Our group of women physicians had become increasingly frustrated in our quest for 100% early detection by the procedural dictates and restrictions imposed by managed health care providers on the quality of care and amount of time we felt our patients deserved. We believe the decision to follow our own private, individualized approach to patient care was the key to reaching 100% early detection. In 2011, the National Cancer Database, the national average for early diagnosis of breast cancer at Stages 0, 1 and 2 was just 85.5%.

Since then, we have formed partnerships with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, Unitedhealthcare, Oxford, Cigna, Aetna and Medicare which allow us to practice our unique model of care, while ensuring more women in NJ have access to quality breast medicine.

We believe that all women deserve the level of breast care we provide and encourage women to consider finding their own breast doctor. Our Founder, Dr. Elliott says, “Women research a lot of things that are important to them; they research where they get their hair done and what restaurants they go to but very few know who read their last mammogram, which is one of the most important decisions they can make. Women should have a breast doctor because breast cancer is the number one killer of women in ages 40 to 55. All the GYN cancers combined equal just one-third the incidence of breast cancer yet women go to their gynecologist every year.”

Reaching 100% early detection for our patients requires our collective team effort including:

• Specially trained breast surgeons and Fellowship-Trained breast radiologists with a minimum of 15 years of experience reading only breast images.
• Complete on-site screening technology, including 3D Mammography, Breast Ultrasound and Breast MRI.
• Comparative review of current mammogram with previous mammogram results and patient history.
• Breast density evaluation.
• SAME DAY consultation with a breast imaging specialist.
• Individualized patient risk analysis for breast cancer.
• Additional studies performed while patients are still in the center, lessening rescheduling, waiting and patient anxiety.
• On-site vacuum-assisted stereotactic biopsy.
• Uncompromised patient care and a long-term meaningful doctor-patient relationship.

Of patients who began and continued their annual screenings at Montclair Breast Center and were diagnosed with breast cancer from June 2011 through November 2023, 100% were diagnosed at the most treatable Stages 0, 1 and 2. The national average for such early diagnosis in all women is just 85.5%.

Here at Montclair Breast Center, we believe that expert breast care means receiving the results of your mammogram quickly. Any additional studies that are required should be performed while you are still in our center. You deserve a same-day personal consultation with a breast imaging specialist. By taking the time to educate our patients and develop a real doctor-patient relationship, we hold the key to early diagnosis.

At Montclair Breast Center, in order to make your experience as comfortable and effective as possible, we avoid performing unnecessarily invasive procedures and inform our patients of any available alternatives.

Montclair Breast Center is an experienced sentinel lymph node biopsy center. This means that in order to sample lymph nodes for signs of cancer, we are able to perform a much less invasive procedure – biopsy as opposed to surgery – that removes only a few lymph nodes (those most likely to be the first nodes where breast cancer may spread or develop from the breast), therefore minimizing the risk of long-term complications. Over 88% of our patients diagnosed with breast cancer who must undergo lymph node assessment are offered this lower-risk method of analysis. There are even some patients for whom the status of these lymph nodes will not affect any further treatment, and so we prefer to discuss the decision to forgo sentinel lymph node biopsy. At Montclair Breast Center, we pride ourselves on being able to offer our patients less invasive alternatives, doing our best to inform patients of the options available to them.

At Montclair Breast Center, our re-excision rate for all patients is 12%, which is 8-36% lower than the national average. In almost all cases, we do not have to operate more than once when removing cancerous tissue from the breast. This means even more to us than decreasing the number of surgeries our patients undergo. This means a more comfortable, less painful experience for our patients, and most importantly – an experience that allows for the fastest possible track towards recovery.

While the National Standard set forth by the American Cancer Society and American College of Surgeons is that around 59% of all patients with early-stage breast cancer are offered breast-conserving surgeries rather than mastectomies, at Montclair Breast Center our breast conserving rates are at 12% higher than the national average – at 71%.

Come Visit Us Today

At Montclair Breast Center, we treat each patient as if they are our only patient. By taking matters into our own hands, we have been able to provide individualized, insightful, and communicative care that delivers the results our patients need to see, and results that far outperform the national average.