Basic information about breast cancer

Breast Exercise For Beautiful Breast Looks at Breast Cancer

As soon as you the phrase ‘breast cancer’; the picture of a woman takes shape in your mind. This disease is not confined to females.  This is known to afflict men rarely as well.  Cancer that starts in tissues of the breast in males and females is commonly known as breast cancer which is the second most common cancer type in the world.

The first sign of breast cancer is a lump or a mass in the underarm or breast area that feels different to the touch. Other symptoms may be a change in size and shape of the breast, nipple inversion, skin irritation or dimpling, swelling of the full breast or part of it, and a discharge from the nipple.  It pays to be cognizant of these signs for early detection of cancer.

At the first sign of breast cancer , the prudent thing to do is to consult a doctor.  The physician will check your breast for any suspicious growth or lump.  Benign lumps are different to the touch from the cancerous lumps.  If the doctor suspects it to be cancer, he will clear any doubts he has with the aid of an xray mammography, an ultrasound scan, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan or a biopsy.  If you are diagnosed with the disease, he may order more lab tests to help him further study it and plan his treatment.

Various therapy methods are available for breast cancer.  Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and biological therapy are such treatments.  From amongst these, radiation and surgery are known as local treatments.  The rest is known as systemic treatments.  Local therapies get rid of or kill the cancer in the breast where as systemic treatments go into the blood circulation and check or kill the cancer.

There are many risk factors associated with breast cancer.  The risk factor is high if you are a woman as the breast cells are always exposed to hormones such as progesterone and estrogen.  As you grow old, the risks grow too.  Since breast cancer is hereditary, the chances of your getting it are higher if someone of your family has had it before than in families where no one has ever been  afflicted with it.

In the world today, breast cancer is said to be the 5th most widespread cause of cancer-related deaths.  You can imagine the seriousness of the problem.  Anyway, it is consolation enough to learn that vast amounts of funds are expended on research to discover the causes and plan out therapy methods of this disease.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 11th, 2009 at 10:59 am and is filed under Womens health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 

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