Breast Cancer Awareness

Breast Cancer Awareness

• Knowledge about what breast cancer is and the seriousness of the problem
• Signs and symptoms of breast cancer
• Knowledge about other benign conditions that can affect the breast
• Screening tests done to detect breast cancer
• Treatment options for breast cancer
• Risk factors for cancer

We can dwell a little more in detail about the above mentioned points

What is breast cancer?

Cancer is basically the uncontrolled multiplication of cells. Once the cells multiply they also spread to far off areas by means of blood or lymph. Cancer can affect any organ present in the body. The breast is one of the most common organs affected by cancer and has gained attention. In breast cancer, there is uncontrolled multiplication of the cells within the breast and this usually manifests as a lump.

Signs and symptoms of breast cancer

• The most common mode of presentation of breast cancer is an asymptomatic lump. The lump is painless but this cannot be a deciding factor.
• Some lumps may be so small that they may not be felt by the hand and seen only on mammograms.
• On the other hand, some lumps when ignored grow to such an extent that they present with skin involvement and ulceration.
• Rarely patients may present with manifestation of the metastases like a pathological bone fracture an later on evaluation may be detected to have a breast lump.

Knowledge about other benign conditions affecting the breast

Not all lumps in the breast are cancerous. Patients need to be aware of these as quite often there are ladies who unnecessarily panic when a breast lump is detected.

When a young woman walks into a clinic and complains of a lump in the breast , the first thought that crosses a doctor's mind is that it is a fibroadenoma, a benign lump, which is quite a common occurrence in females.

Most fibroadenomas do not require any biopsy and can be just left alone. There will however be one odd young lady whose cancer detection was delayed because the doctor initially assumed the lump to be a fibroadenoma.

Recommending biopsy or removal of fibroadenomas in all ladies would be an overkill. This is where the clinical acumen of the doctor plays a pivotal role.

A doctor should be able to suspect the - wolves in the sheep clothing lumps and order for additional investigations such as an ultrasound of the breast. If the doctor is not sufficiently experienced in dealing with breast cancer it would be prudent on his part to refer all ladies with breast lumps to an oncologist for evaluation.

Screening tests done for breast cancer

In recent years there is a lot of emphasis on early detection of breast cancer. Screening of normal females without any complaints is recommended by way of mammogram. Mammograms can detect lumps which are 1/16th the size of lumps which can be detected by clinical

examination. Annual mammograms are recommended for all females who have crossed the age of 40 years.

In younger females breast ultrasound is preferred as the information given by mammogram will be less because of the dense breasts

Treatment options for breast cancer

The treatments available for breast cancer are surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. Depending on the stage of the disease either one , two or all three treatment modalities may be needed. Earlier the only surgery which was performed for breast cancer was a mastectomy in which the entire breast was removed but now more and more attempts are made to preserve the breast in suitable patients. There are many options available now within radiation and chemotherapy also.

Risk factors for breast cancer

Though many factors are known to predispose a lady to breast cancer we cannot pinpoint specific factors in most ladies who develop this disease. There are certain instances of breast cancer running in families but this does not mean that just because a close relative has breast cancer one is likely to get breast cancer. Most females who have breast cancer do not have a family history of breast cancer. If there is a high incidence of breast cancer within the family then certain genetic tests are done to look for mutations.

Similarly there are other risk factors like use of estrogen replacement pills after menopause, early menarche and late menopause and not having breast feed the children. These factors too are known to predispose females to breast cancer but need not be present in each and every one suffering from this disease

The number of breast cancer is increasing rapidly. Awareness about breast cancer will help females to help detect the disease early and reduce the burden of the treatment and improve the treatment results.