Many women know the importance of performing monthly breast self-exams. What they may not know is that an Arkansan was instrumental in developing the self-exam method most commonly used today.

While a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Ann Coleman decided to study the effectiveness of breast self-exams. She contacted Dr. Henry Pennypacker, a professor at the University of Florida known for his development of Mammocare, a recognized standard for performing and teaching self-exam techniques. Together they conducted research that resulted in the now-standard method taught to medical professionals and women in the general public.

“We studied various aspects of self-exams and determined what we believed was most important,” Coleman said.

What Coleman and Pennypacker concluded was that self-exams are best performed lying down and need to encompass the entire breast, from the collar bone to the bra line and from beneath the arm to the center of the chest. They also developed the idea of using three levels of pressure – light, medium and deep – to determine if a tumor lies near the surface or deep in the breast tissue. “It’s like looking for a raisin in a three-layer cake. You have to exert three levels of pressure by using the pads of the fingers in a circular motion,” Coleman said.

Coleman is a professor in the UAMS College of Nursing and Department of Internal Medicine and holds the Elizabeth Stanley Cooper Chair in Oncology Nursing at UAMS.