“October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month” October 9, 2008

"Feel Those Boobies"

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so think pink and support awareness by sporting a pink ribbon. This year it’s estimated a whopping 21,400 women will develop breast cancer, and 5,300 women will lose their battle against it.

Best defense? The pink ribbon campaign promotes prevention and early detection, more research, supporting women and families living with breast cancer, and educating women to “feel their boobies” to stem breast cancer.

So, what’re waiting for? Feel your boobies!

Breast Cancer Awareness is consider one of the preventive measures towards such a disease. Hence, it is deemed necessary to educate loved ones and friends to do an early mammogram or thermogram.

This month October marks the breast cancer awareness month, we should take this opportunity to educate people and improve awareness to breast cancer as this can help to detect it early or even prevent it.

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Breast Cancer Symptoms

Breast cancers in their early stages are usually painless. Often the first symptom is the discovery of a hard lump. Fifty percent of such masses are found in the upper outer quarter of the breast. The lump may make the affected breast appear elevated or asymmetric. The nipple may be retracted or scaly. Sometimes the skin of the breast is dimpled like the skin of an orange. In some cases there is a bloody or clear discharge from the nipple. Many cancers, however, produce no symptoms and cannot be felt on examination. They can be detected only with a mammogram.

Monthly breast self-exams should always include: visual inspection (with and without a mirror) to note any changes in contour or texture, and manual inspection in standing and reclining positions to note any unusual lumps or thicknesses.

Mammograms don’t prevent breast cancer, but they can save lives by finding breast cancer as early as possible. For example, mammograms have been shown to lower the risk of dying from breast cancer by 35% in women over the age of 50; studies suggest for women between 40 and 50 they may lower the risk of dying from breast cancer by 25–35%.

Leading experts, the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the American College of Radiology now recommend annual mammograms for women over 40.

Finding breast cancers early with mammography has also meant that many more women being treated for breast cancer are able to keep their breasts. When caught early, localized cancers can be removed without resorting to breast removal (mastectomy).

Mammograms aren’t perfect. Normal breast tissue can hide a breast cancer, so that it doesn’t show up on the mammogram. This is called a false negative. And mammography can identify an abnormality that looks like a cancer, but turns out to be normal. This “false alarm” is called a false positive. To make up for these limitations, more than mammography is needed. Women also need to practice breast self-examination, get regular breast examination by an experienced health care professional, and, in some cases, also get another form of breast imaging, like ultrasound or MRI scanning.

What Mammograms Show

We recommend routine mammographic screening for women with a history of multiple cysts. If your mammogram is changing, we add ultrasound to the workup to ensure that it is a cyst. If you have cysts, don’t assume that a new lump is just a cyst. See a doctor who can examine you, aspirate (remove by suction) the cyst, or have an ultrasound study to make sure that’s all it is. ”

typical mammogram.

What A Mammogram Shows

Most standard mammographic workups include two views of each breast taken from different angles. Even if you have a lump in only one breast, pictures will be taken of both breasts. This is so the breasts can be compared, and so that the other breast can be checked for abnormalities. If you’ve had a mammogram before, the radiologist will compare your old mammogram to the new one to look for changes.

While they’re looking for possible cancer, your doctors may also come across other masses or structures in the breast that deserve further investigation, including:

• Calcifications are tiny flecks of calcium — like grains of salt — in the soft tissue of the breast that can sometimes indicate the presence of an early breast cancer. Calcifications usually can’t be felt, but they appear on a mammogram. Depending on how they’re clustered and their shape, size, and number, your doctor may want to do further tests. Big calcifications — “macrocalcifications” — are usually not associated with cancer. Groups of small calcifications huddled together, called “clusters of microcalcifications,” are associated with extra breast cell activity. Most of the time this is non-cancerous extra cell growth, but sometimes clusters of microcalcifications can occur in areas of early cancer.

• Cysts. Unlike cancerous tumors which are solid, cysts are fluid-filled masses in the breast. Cysts are very common, and are rarely associated with cancer. Ultrasound is the best way to tell a cyst from a cancer, because sound waves pass right through a liquid-filled cyst. Solid lumps, on the other hand, bounce the waves right back to the film.
• Fibroadenomas are movable, solid, rounded lumps made up of normal breast cells. While not cancerous, these lumps may grow. And any solid lump that’s getting bigger is usually removed to make sure that it’s not a cancer. Fibroadenomas are the most common kind of breast mass, especially in young women.