The Paris Breast Center team: a close-knit team to accompany you

The medical team, a fundamental element of breast cancer care

The team is fundamental: it is this teamwork that differentiates us from a surgeon who operates on hernias or pelvic fractures. At the Paris Breast Center, we have put together the dream team, the ideal team. The best at each position. Your doctor will offer to take care of you with the different professionals on his or her team, but you have the right to change so-and-so if he or she does not suit you. It is very important that each patient feels confident with all members of the team.

If one of them says to the chemotherapist that it doesn’t go well with me because I’m always late – which is absolutely true! – I can understand that. At the Paris Breast Center, we have a dream team, but with substitutes, all of whom are high level. I love rugby. England coach Eddie Jones once said that rugby fans will understand what the game is all about when they know that rugby is not played with 15 players and 7 substitutes but with 22.

When breast cancer strikes you, our job is to build up a close-knit guard around you, sometimes without you even realizing it. When I went from public service – which, I want to repeat, is remarkable in France – to private service, I chose to build up this close-knit guard for each patient, just as I would do for myself or my family if cancer were to strike me. In a hospital structure, no matter how brilliant, you can’t change much because the team is there, unchanging, generation after generation. Great houses outlive their servants. Here at the Paris Breast Center, we have chosen every member we work with, and the patient has the freedom to change them. Everyone plays together with a common goal. What we’ve tried to do here is the All-Star Game: bring together the best players in the country at every position.

Breast cancer: the surgeons’ mission

Our first mission as surgeons is always to reassure. I regularly tell my team that when a woman comes to us with death on her shoulders, she must leave with a smile on her face.

The Cancer Plan says that the mission of the first visit, carried out in a 3C (cancer coordination center), is to establish the treatment plan, the framework within which you must fit. And the doctor, as a rule, focuses on this technical aspect: what surgery, what postoperative treatments?

But when you fly to New York, do you ask for the model of the plane’s engine? No, you just want us to get you to New York. Your goal is to get there. My team and I will get you to New York. Is there any turbulence? Don’t worry, we’ll handle it. Worried about back pain? We’ll lay you down. Do you eat vegetarian? There are special menus. We’ll get you to New York safely. And on the flight, there are plenty of people to take care of you: the pilot, the co-pilot, the stewardess, the weather engineer…

In the same way, our team of breast cancer specialists is there to accompany you on this great journey, to fly with you so that you don’t crash on arrival.