|
Dr. Alan Hollingsworth received his M.D. with Distinction from the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine in 1975 where he served as First Vice-President of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. In addition to his general surgery residency at OU, he completed a one-year fellowship in surgical pathology at U.C.L.A. In the 1980s, he joined the first wave of surgeons who chose to limit their practices to breast cancer. He was the Founding Medical Director of the University of Oklahoma Institute for Breast Health in 1993 where he held the G. Rainey Williams Chair of Surgical Breast Oncology. Currently, he serves as Medical Director of Mercy Women's Center (Mercy Health Center, Oklahoma City) and Medical Director, Breast MRI of Oklahoma. His interest in breast cancer risk assessment led to the publication of the first lay book on the subject, The Truth About Breast Cancer Risk Assessment, and he served as lead author for the multi-institutional consensus paper published in the American Journal of Surgery by the national breast cancer risk assessment working group. Although a surgeon by training, his publications have dealt more with breast imaging, and his practice today is focused on diagnostics, risk assessment, genetic counseling and BRCA testing. For more than a decade, and long before there was much interest in finding a blood test, or ductal fluid test, to screen for early breast cancer, Dr. Hollingsworth has been pursuing this research agenda. Believing that such research should be based on breast MRI data, rather than low-sensitivity mammograms, he has been collecting blood samples for several years from women undergoing MRI of the breast, creating the largest collection of serum samples and data linked to MRI in the country | 