Martina Džoić Dominković

Young researchers from small hospitals can receive a proper recognition, too!

Martina Džoić Dominković, MD, PhD, is a radiologist at the Department of Radiology, General Hospital Orašje, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Together with her team she explored the interconnection of breast pain, pregnancy, and body mass index with breast tissue elasticity in healthy women as far as glandular and fat differences were concerned.

Dr. Martina Džoić Dominković considers it a great honour to be one of this year's IMA nominees. To her, this means that the efforts of young researchers in small hospitals have been recognized as well, and from her point of view this is also an inspiration for further professional development.

In the study, she and her team looked for possible applications of the new ultrasound method – elastography – in healthy women, while this method was so far used only in the diagnosis of breast cancer. Breast sonoelastography is a relatively novel ultrasound method which enables assessment of tissue stiffness to estimate the elasticity of normal breast tissue and to seek to correlate it with well-known breast cancer risk factors. Glandular and fat tissue elasticity in all breast quadrants was measured by elastography. Mean elastographic values of breast tissue were calculated and compared to personal history risk factors. The results of this study are promising and could, over time, contribute to a better understanding of glandular breast tissue elasticity as a potential risk factor for breast cancer.

“Research is very important to me, because the whole medicine is based on it, which can be observed especially now during the pandemic. Unfortunately, the conditions for research in my country are very poor, particularly in small towns like mine. My interest in research began during my specialization in Zagreb, Croatia. There I met great clinical researchers, such as Assistant Professor Ivanac and Professor Brkljačić with whom I conducted this research,”

she points out and regrets not having enough opportunities to keep up with the recent developments and all the progress in radiology due to a lot of patients on one hand and lack of educational events on the other.

Being a young doctor, she considers clinical work as her base, and working with patients gives her a lot of satisfaction and most of all ideas for further research work. As much as Dr. Džoić Dominković loves working, she enjoys her free time as well, dedicating it to her family and children, writing poetry, reading books and watching films.