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Margie Petersen Breast Center at Providence Saint John’s Health Center

We’re a dedicated Breast Health Center that’s designed to function like urgent care. If a person finds a lump or change in their breast, our program allows them to come in quickly for an evaluation.

Our unique partnership with the Saint John’s Cancer Institute offers an environment that combines clinical excellence with innovative research, ensuring that the care you receive is outcomes-based and optimized specifically to you.

4.9   |  676 Ratings
2121 Santa Monica Blvd, Garden Level, Santa Monica, CA 90404
1182.9 miles away
310-582-7100

Margie Petersen Breast Center at Providence Saint John’s Health Center

We’re a dedicated Breast Health Center that’s designed to function like urgent care. If a person finds a lump or change in their breast, our program allows them to come in quickly for an evaluation.

Our unique partnership with the Saint John’s Cancer Institute offers an environment that combines clinical excellence with innovative research, ensuring that the care you receive is outcomes-based and optimized specifically to you.

4.9   |  676 Ratings
2121 Santa Monica Blvd, Garden Level, Santa Monica, CA 90404
1182.9 miles away
310-582-7100

Why Choose Us for Breast Cancer Care?

The Margie Petersen Breast Center at Providence Saint John’s Health Center offers the most compassionate and innovative care in Southern California. We’re a comprehensive, multidisciplinary breast center that is ready to support you.

Doctor smiling at patient

From the moment you walk through our doors, you can expect:

  • The same comprehensive, cutting-edge services offered by major academic centers, provided at a community hospital you know and trust
  • A team of specialists in every aspect of breast care who collaborate across multiple locations to provide convenient, connected care close to your home or work
  • World-class treatment options, including the latest clinical trials
  • Personal, compassionate support in a tranquil environment

For those diagnosed with breast cancer, we focus on caring for the whole person: mind, body and spirit, providing access to medical expertise, innovative treatments and support services. Our doctors and nurse navigator make sure to provide each patient, and their families, with a comprehensive and personalized path to the most effective treatment. This includes combining quality care with integrated practices such as mindfulness and yoga.

Your team often includes multiple experts who specialize in very specific aspects of treatment, as well as nurses, dietitians, counselors and others, all collaborating on your care. During regular case review meetings, our multidisciplinary cancer care teams gather to:

  • Optimize care coordination
  • Recommend treatments or symptom-management strategies
  • Review patient cases
  • Share clinical opinions
  • Suggest opportunities for clinical trials

We also offer a Providence Molecular Tumor Board, where we evaluate your genomic and clinical information to find the best genetically matched treatment for you.

The doctors at the Margie Petersen Breast Center have the advantage of working alongside other researchers including geneticists, biologists, immunologists, drug discovery scientists and clinical trials experts at Providence Saint John’s Cancer Institute who collaborate with dozens of academic and industry organizations worldwide.

Together, we apply decades of research and data from thousands of cancer cases to improve our clinical practice and the quality of life for our patients. For example, we can identify biomarkers and genetic profiles that indicate who is more likely to have a recurrence of cancer, which can guide early treatment strategies and other preventive measures. As a patient, you can be assured that highly recognized doctors and peer-reviewed, published physicians and scientists are all working together to develop the best care approach and medical solutions.

As a patient at Providence, you have access to the largest community-based cancer network in the United States. Being part of a collaborative network means that your local breast cancer care team shares knowledge and experience with other world-class clinicians across 51 hospitals in seven states. The extent and power of our network is one of the reasons 10,000 breast cancer patients and 50,000 cancer patients choose Providence each year.

We’re dedicated to advancing health for our breast cancer patients. We offer the most recent medical developments and clinical trials to find better ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease. Individuals who volunteer for clinical trials play an active role in their own health care and help others by advancing medicine.

Many of the physicians and surgeons who treated and care for patients at the Margie Petersen Breast Center are also faculty, adjunct faculty and physicians in a fellowship program affiliated with Providence Saint John's Cancer Institute.

Learn more about the current breast oncology research efforts at Providence Saint John's Cancer Institute.

Personalized Treatment for Breast Cancer

We take a team approach to your cancer treatment because we know this offers the best success in controlling and curing cancer. Your multidisciplinary cancer care team will work with you to design an individualized cancer care plan, from diagnosis to post-treatment support. We offer many different therapies across our Providence locations. Depending on your condition, your personal care plan may include one or more of the following:

Systemic therapies travel through the bloodstream and affect cells in other body parts. They are used for patients whose cancer has spread to other areas of the body or if there’s a high risk of spread. Sophisticated genetic analysis allows us to target therapies to specific DNA mutations that cause cancer cells to develop and grow.

Systemic therapies include:

  • Chemotherapy
  • Clinical trials
  • Hormone therapy
  • Immunotherapy
  • Molecularly targeted therapy

Surgical therapies involve an operation or procedure to remove cancer from the body. Surgery may be the main treatment for some invasive cancers, but it’s only one part of the entire treatment plan.

Surgical therapies include:

  • Advanced axillary surgery techniques
  • Aesthetic flat closure mastectomy
  • Axillary lymph node dissection
  • Excisional breast biopsy
  • Excisional breast biopsy using targeted localization techniques
  • Lumpectomy
  • Mastectomy with immediate reconstruction
  • Nipple-sparing mastectomy
  • Oncoplastic lumpectomy
  • Risk-reducing mastectomy
  • Sentinel lymph node mapping and biopsy
  • Skin-sparing mastectomy
  • Total mastectomy

Radiation therapy uses high-energy radiation from a source like X-rays or photons to kill cancer cells or shrink tumors. Sometimes it’s part of a treatment plan that also includes systemic therapies and/or surgery. Radiation can be used to help ease a patient’s pain or discomfort.

Radiation therapies include:

  • Active Breathing Coordinator™ (ABC)
  • Accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI)
  • Hypofractionated whole breast radiation therapy
  • Intraoperative radiation therapy (IORT)
  • Stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS)
  • Three-dimensional conformal radiation therapy (3DCRT)

Additional therapies may also be part of your treatment plan.

You’ll be provided with cancer supportive therapies to prevent or relieve symptoms, and to keep you as comfortable as possible throughout the course of your treatment. These may include lymphedema therapy.

Meet the Team

At Providence, you'll have access to a vast network of dedicated and compassionate providers who offer personalized care by focusing on treatment, prevention and health education.

Female doctor wearing mask, doctors in background

Breast Cancers We Treat

Providence provides expertise in treating all types of breast cancer, including rare forms:

  • Ductal cancers start in the ducts that carry milk to the nipple.
  • Lobular cancers start in the glands, or lobules, that produce milk.
  • In situ indicates abnormal or cancerous cells that have not spread beyond the duct or gland.
  • Infiltrating or invasive cancers have spread into surrounding breast tissue.
  • Metastatic cancers have spread beyond the breast and nearby lymph nodes to other parts of the body.

The cancers we treat include, but are not limited to:

  • Infiltrating ductal carcinoma (IDC): This is the most common cancer type, making up 70-80% of all breast cancers. It begins in the lining of the milk ducts and then grows through the ducts into the nearby breast tissue. If not treated, it can spread, or metastasize, to other parts of the body.
  • Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS): This is a non- or pre-invasive cancer that is still confined to the milk ducts, but that may become invasive.
  • Infiltrating lobular carcinoma (ILC): Another common form of breast cancer, this type begins in the lining of the milk-producing glands and grows into the breast tissue. Without treatment, it can spread outside of the breast.
  • Lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS): These abnormal cells, confined to the milk glands, are not technically considered cancer and don’t typically become invasive. However, they do increase the risk of developing cancer in either breast in the future.
  • Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC): In this rare and very aggressive disease, cancer cells block the lymph vessels of the breast skin, causing inflammation, swelling, redness and thickening of the skin. This fast-spreading cancer can metastasize without quick treatment. About 1-5% of breast cancers are inflammatory.
  • Metastatic breast cancer (MBC): While breast cancers that have spread to other parts of the body can’t be cured, there are many treatments that can help keep them under control for years.

Early Detection and Prevention

The earlier breast cancer is found, the better the chances of successful treatment. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to any changes in your breasts that could be potential signs of breast cancer. Understanding what is normal for your breasts, and what isn’t, can be lifesaving.

Signs and Symptoms Next Steps
Signs and Symptoms

In the very earliest stages, breast cancer has no outward symptoms. Sometimes the earliest sign is a tiny lump or mass that’s detectable only on a mammogram. However, as the disease progresses, more noticeable changes might appear. These can vary widely – while a lump is the most common symptom, it is by no means the only one.

Any of the following changes could be a warning sign of breast cancer:

  • Bloody nipple discharge or unilateral discharge other than breast milk
  • Dimpling, puckering, irritation or scaliness of the breast skin or nipple
  • Lump in the breast or armpit area
  • Nipple that turns inward, flattens out, pulls to one side or changes direction
  • Pain or tenderness in the breast or nipple
  • Swelling in all or part of the breast
  • Thickening or redness of the breast skin

These symptoms may be signs of breast cancer in men as well as women.

If you notice a potential symptom of breast cancer, or if you’re concerned about any changes in the way one of your breasts looks or feels:

  • Please call your primary care provider or breast care specialist.
  • While these symptoms don’t always indicate cancer – sometimes they’re signs of a less serious condition, such as a cyst or an infection – it’s important to have a physician evaluate them right away.
  • Don’t wait to see if they go away on their own.
  • It bears repeating – treating breast cancer successfully is much easier when it’s caught and treated early.
  • Learn More about the Margie Petersen Breast Center

    We provide a one-stop, comprehensive, multidisciplinary clinic for an array of supportive services to complement your breast health conditions.

  • Importance of Getting Regular Mammograms

    Providence encourages every woman to talk to her doctor, beginning at age 40, about when to start breast cancer screening through regular mammograms.

The Power of Our Network

Part of the Providence Cancer Institute in Los Angeles

Our patients are the center of everything we do:

  • Our unique patient navigator program offers navigators specific to each cancer type to assist you throughout your cancer journey.
  • Our beautiful, modern hospitals are equipped with the latest technologies.
  • We also offer robust research labs not found in local, community-focused hospitals.

Learn more about the Providence Cancer Institute in Los Angeles

Doctor sitting with patient

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