Dr. Kandace McGuire, chief of breast surgery at VCU Massey Cancer Center, believes medicine and innovation go hand-in-hand.
“Medicine is all about innovation and finding better ways to treat people or keep them healthy if they don’t have a disease,” she said.
With that goal in mind, Massey recently announced that it is the first facility in Virginia to use a substance called Magtrace to help save breast cancer patients’ lymph nodes. Magtrace is approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
McGuire said saving the lymph nodes, when possible, can reduce a patient’s risk of developing Lymphedema, a build-up of fluid in soft body tissues commonly caused by lymph node removal associated with breast cancer surgery.
“Once you have lymphedema, it doesn’t go away,” she said. “Anything we can do to prevent it; we want to do.”
Magtrace, McGuire said, is made of iron oxide nanoparticles and acts as a form of sentinel lymph node mapping dye that doctors can use when…
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