Breast Endocrine Surgery

The Breast and Endocrine Surgical unit provides inpatient and outpatient services for complex benign and malignant breast and endocrine conditions for individuals both in South Australia and interstate, as well as patients referred from rural and remote areas. 

The majority of inpatient care for breast and endocrine conditions occurs at TQEH, with some surgery undertaken at the RAH. 

Services include:

• One Stop Breast Clinic
• breast reduction
• thyroid disease
• parathyroid disease
• adrenal lesions.

Breast Endocrine Ward is located in North East Building, Ground Floor B.

Breast Endocrine Outpatients is located in Outpatients building, XXX Floor, Area XXX.

Consultants

• Dr Melissa Bochner - Head of Unit
• Dr David Walters

Breast care nurse consultant

• Roshni Lata.

You need a referral from a GP or medical practitioner to access this service.

Once your referral has been received it will be triaged according to clinical urgency.

If your referral is accepted, you will either:

• receive a letter, phone call or text message confirming your appointment time, date and location
• receive a letter confirming you have been waitlisted for an appointment

If the referral is declined, your GP or referring medical practitioner will be notified.

We accept GP and specialist referrals to this service.

eReferrals and referrals via emails are preferred.

To ensure timely triage, include all demographic and clinical details, such as:

• patient demographics including name, address, date of birth, telephone numbers, Medicare number, language spoken and mobility issues (if relevant)
• presenting problem
• past history including medications and known allergies
• family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer
• previous test results (including name of radiology provider so that images can be accessed at the breast clinic).

The service triages referrals according to clinical urgency. 

The Unit has a strong history of contributing to national and international clinical trials in breast cancer. 

It works closely with the Departments of Medical Oncology and Radiation Oncology, providing patients with the opportunity to participate in numerous clinical trials assessing new breast cancer treatments.

The Unit has a longstanding history in clinical and translational research, having published hundreds of articles in scientific journals relating to new advances in breast and endocrine surgery.

The Unit is accredited as a post for intern training (CEPTSA), pre-fellowship surgical training (RACS SET training) and by BreastSurgANZ for post-fellowship training in breast and endocrine surgery.

Trainees working on the unit will be responsible to the Head of Unit and can expect significant exposure and training in:

• The management of both benign and malignant breast disease
• Experience in level I and level II oncoplastic breast surgery (including skin-sparing mastectomy, tissue expander reconstruction, DTI reconstruction, Latissimus Dorsi and TRAM Flap reconstruction, therapeutic mammoplasty, perforator flap partial breast reconstruction etc.)
• Experience in endocrine surgery (including thyroid surgery, neck dissection, minimally invasive parathyroid surgery and adrenal surgery)
• Emergency general surgery
• Breast/thyroid ultrasound
• Teaching and training of junior staff
• Conduct research with the aims of publication in peer-reviewed journals and presenting papers at national/international meetings
• Outpatient clinics in both specialist breast (1-2 per week) and endocrine surgery (1 per week)
• Multidisciplinary meetings for both breast and endocrine cases
• Multidisciplinary clinics at BreastScreen SA

The Breast Endocrine Fellow position is funded by the Surgical Specialties Directorate as a senior registrar with terms and conditions in accordance with the South Australian Salaried Medical Officers Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. The Fellow provides remote call for the unit’s emergency commitments. At the end of their year the Fellow can expect to gain confidence in managing high volume elective and complex breast and endocrine cases, and to develop well rounded evidence-based decision-making skills.