Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is not the largest killer among women, breast cancer can be cured if it has been found in early states, this is where breast cancer awareness becomes important.



Large numbers of women can avoid radical mastectomy or breast removal. Today due to advancement in science there is rarely any reason for radical mastectomy.

There are several breast cancer symptoms that should come to your notice so that you can detect breast cancer in advance. These symptoms are change in general looks of your breasts especially if this has occurred after your periods.



Other symptoms include flattening of breasts and/or causing of indentation on your breasts and nipples like the orange skin. Symptoms also include any lump especially painless on your breasts and any clear or blood discharge from the nipple.

You also require noting that not all changes in your breasts are due to breast cancer, there are several reasons why changes can occur to your breasts. There are several causes for breast cancer, however breast cancer is rarely due to genetics, only 5-10% cases have been found as genetic causes of breast cancer.



Women exposed to chest radiation are one of the causes of breast cancer; also some environmental factors are a reason for breast cancer.

There are several risks of breast cancer, the onset of breast cancer can be if your menstrual cycle has started before the age of 12, you are susceptible to breast cancer if you have been exposed to radiation therapy, or if there are any other patients suffering from this disease in your family and your age, most women are known to suffer from breast cancer above the age of 80.



Other reasons like smoking, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, use of birth control pills, and also race. It has been noticed that white women are more likely to get breast cancer than black, Hispanic or Asian women, however in black women breast cancer is more aggressive and there are greater chances of them dying from the disease.

Breast cancer treatment include, lumpectomy, where instead of removing complete breast only the lump and the tissue around it is removed and most of the times the breast is saved. Partial or segmental mastectomy, this involves removing the tumor and the tissue surrounding the tumor, so that the breast is saved, all these operations are followed up with a radiation therapy which is aimed at destroying all the remaining cancer cells.

Other breast cancer treatments are sentinel lymph node biopsy, reconstructive surgery, auxiliary lymph node dissection, etc.