A big part of Boyd’s mission is making sure thatevery woman who needs a breast biopsy—surgical removal of a breast tissue sample for diagnostic purposes—gets the least invasive kind possible. “Too many women in this country were going into the hospital for a biopsy and coming out with a mastectomy,” says Boyd.

One of those less invasive biopsy methods is something called an image-guided biopsy, in which doctors pinpoint a potentially cancerous lesion using ultrasound or X-ray, then remove the tissue through a small incision. Instead of general anesthesia, a day in surgery and a huge scar afterward, patients receive local anesthetic and a pencil eraser–sizedincision, and are on their way home in a few hours. That difference in time, pain and recovery is a big deal when you consider that 1.27 million women have breast biopsies each year, says Boyd, who at age 10 lost her mother to colon cancer.

“In the United States we’re aware of [breast] screening, and we’ve done a good job of educating women about gooddetection,” says Boyd. “What I hear from women now is this: ‘What are my options? Do I have to go for surgery for everything?’ Eighty percent of what we see on a mammogram is benign. If every woman has to go to the operating room and end up with a big scar to find out that something is benign, that’s a problem.”

Boyd’s second concern is that doctors not only know about such minimally invasive biopsies, like the image-guided ones Fine uses, but also have the training and confidence to offer them to their patients. (Full disclosure: She and Fine consult with a California company called Rubicor that makes one of the devices for image-guided biopsies.)

Boyd has spent the past decade teaching image-guided biopsy courses at annual meetings of various surgeon associations, including the American College of Surgeons and the American Society of Breast Surgeons. “We understand that the majority of breast surgeries in this country aren’t doneby breast surgeons,” says Dr. Art Lerner, a breast surgeon in White Plains, New York, and a past president of the Society, “but by well-trained general surgeons.” And it is these general surgeons who need the breast-oriented education the most.

But Boyd wanted to do more than just teach a few courses a year.

So she turned to the American Society of Breast Surgeons, of which her boss is also a past president, with this idea: Let’s start a foundation to raise money for the Society so we can do this biopsy education year-round instead of at annual meetings only. This education is critical, given that of the 2,000 Society members, only 20 percent are specifically breast surgeons, like Fine.

The Society welcomed Boyd’s idea. “We’re a volunteer-driven organization with a very small paid staff, so when we need to get things done, we rely on our volunteers,” says Jane Schuster, the executive director of the Society, basedin Columbia, Maryland. She considers Boyd “extremely dedicated, committed and really tireless in her efforts,” adding, “Beth has been a prime staple of a volunteer who will really work hard to get things done.”

With the foundation and its fund-raising efforts, Boyd hopes to have more money to reach 100 percent of the Society’s members and beyond them as well.

The nonprofit Foundation of the American Society of Breast Surgeons turns 1 year old this month, having become official in November 2004. Boyd organized its first fund-raiser earlier this year—a February tennis tournament in Pleasanton, California. One of Boyd’s friends from the Golden State helped her put it together, and the event raised $14,000. Boyd hopes to make it an annual event.

She also envisions providing on the foundation’s newly created Web site a consumer-oriented link, which would help educate women patients on their breast biopsy options.

Even with her busy schedule as Fine’s clinical director, Boyd has managed to make an ideaa reality, something that doesn’t surprise Fine. “You have to know Beth and that when she gets her mind set on something,she doesn’t give up,” he says. “And if it’s something that she believes in, she keeps going until it happens.”

Another way Boyd is helping tosupport the young foundation is by donating a portion of sales of her recent invention, Gentle Wrap. Boyd explains its genesis: “After we do a biopsy, we wrap the woman’s breast and chest in an Ace wrap for compression, which helps in the comfort and to reduce [bruising and swelling].” Putting on an Ace bandage, however, is usually a two-person job, so if the woman needs to redo it, she needs someone else around. The Gentle Wrap, on the other hand, looks like an abdominal binder, but it wraps around the patient’s chest and then closes with Velcro in the front. It’s made from medical grade, nonlatex elastic, which means it’s soft and easy to use—a woman can put it on and take it off by herself.

Dr. Christina Dial, a breast surgeon in Jackson, Mississippi, provides Gentle Wrap for all of her breast biopsy patients—a minimum of 40 women per month. Besides the medical benefits it offers, Dial appreciates Gentle Wrap’s feminine touch—it comes packaged ina white satin drawstring bag—at a time when a woman is feeling anything but feminine. “It used to be that a woman leaving a biopsy would have to shove her bra in her purse,” says Dial. “This bag gives them some privacy and doesn’t make them feel as if everyone knows that they’ve just had a biopsy done.”

Boyd adds, “It sounds like an insignificant thing, but for a lot of patients, this little bag meant a great deal.”

Boyd understands that the foundation will evolve over time. But for the moment, according to Lerner, the foundation’s principal vision is to “helppatient support programs, educatesurgeons in breast care, support continuing research, and provide educational grants and events so surgeons can learn new and evolving technology.”

Boyd believes that what a person with breast disease has to deal withis 10 percent disease and 90 percent mind-set. If she can make breast biopsies a little less awful for the women who need them, she feels, she can help improve the mind-set, and lessenthe overall burden, of breast cancerpatients nationwide.

Boyd hopes that her education of these physicians will have an addedbenefit for patients. “What I bring tothe table is that I look at this from afemale standpoint rather than a medical standpoint,” she says. “It’s something I think physicians need to know, need to hear, that there’s a person involved here.”