After skin cancer, breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women in the United States. It is second only to lung cancer in cancer-related deaths.
Source: NCI Booklet, "The Facts About
Mammograms and Breast Cancer"
Breast cancer costs this nation $6 billion annually, in medical costs and lost productivity. Last year, Congress approved $15.5 billion in funding for health research in 1999; it is anticipated that $479 million of that amount will go toward breast cancer research this year.
Source: National Breast Cancer Coalition
Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women in 15-34 and 35-54 age groups and the second cause of cancer death for women aged 55-74. Smoking increases women's risk of getting lung cancer and/or breast cancer.
Source: National Cancer Institute
Known risk factors for breast cancer include:
- Personal history of a prior breast cancer
- Evidence of a specific genetic change that increases susceptibility to breast cancer
- Mother, sister, daughter, or two or more close relatives, such as cousins, with a history of breast cancer (especially if diagnosed at a young age)
- A diagnosis of a breast condition (i.e., atypical hyperplasia) that may predispose a woman to breast cancer, or a history of two or more breast biopsies for benign breast disease - women who receive chest irradiation for conditions such as Hodgkin's disease at age 30 or younger, remain at higher risk for breast cancer throughout their lives.
Source: NCI Cancer Facts
The following chart illustrates women's lifetime risk of getting breast cancer:
by age 30: 1 in 2,525
by age 40: 1 in 217
by age 50: 1 in 50
by age 60: 1 in 24
by age 70: 1 in 14
by age 80: 1 in 10
Source: National Cancer Institute
White Non-Hispanic women have the highest incidence rate for breast cancer among U.S.
racial/ethnic groups, and Korean women have the lowest.
African American women have the highest mortality rate for breast cancer among these same groups (31 per 100,000), while Chinese women have the lowest at 11 per 100,000.
Source: Racial/Ethnic Patterns of Cancer in the United States 1988-1992, NCI
from Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book
1. Having fibrocystic disease increases your risk of breast cancer.*
2. Coffee increases your risk of breast cancer.
3. Only women with a family history of breast cancer are at risk.
4. Mammography is 100% accurate in early breast cancer detection.
5. Older women don't have to worry about breast A diagnosis of breast cancer is an emergency.
6. A mastectomy ensures that the cancer is gone forever.
7. A breast cancer diagnosis is a death sentence.
8. Breast self-exams done routinely will find all cancers at a curable state.
9. Only women get breast cancer.
* Some health professionals do not agree with Dr. Love on this issue.
The female breast is composed of 15-20 sections, called lobes, with each lobe ending in many smaller lobules. These lobules further end in dozens of tiny bulbs which produce milk during lactation. The three components, lobes, lobules, and bulbs, are all linked together by thin tubes called ducts. All the small ducts eventually come together to form larger ducts which empty to the outside through the nipple. The actual breast is composed of fat and breast tissue. There is no muscle in the breast, but muscle does lie underneath the breast, covering the ribs (the pectoralis muscle, or "pecs").
Most of the breast cancers form initially in the ducts of the breast. When the disease is confined to the ducts it is called intraductal cancer. These types of cancers do not have the potential of spreading and are curable. Since the majority of ducts occur within the upper-outer breast quadrant, and most breast cancers come from the ducts, this is where most of the cancers occur (50%). The lower-inner quadrant has the lowest number of breast ducts and therefor has the lowest incidence of breast cancer.
When the cancer cells break out of the duct, the cancer becomes an infiltrating ductal carcinoma.
At this time, the cancer cells may gain access to the lymphatic spaces and blood vessels in the breast, may spread via these structures (metastases) and the breast cancer is much more serious, may recur (come back) after the primary (initial) treatment and is the type that causes the deaths of patients.
The treatment for breast cancer 40 years ago was called a radical mastectomy. This surgical procedure involved the removal of the breast and the underlying muscles of the chest wall, resulting in a significant cosmetic deformity.
More conservative procedures such as the modified radial mastectomy (just removing the breast and leaving the underlying muscles intact) or lumpectomy (just removing the cancer from the breast with a rim of normal breast tissue around the cancer, i.e., clear margins) have been found to be equally effective for treating breast cancer.
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