What Are The Symptoms Of Breast Cancer
Some of the symptoms include:
- A lump or abnormality in the shape or feel of the breast
- A lump in the underarm area
- A generalized swelling of all or a part of the breast
- An irritation or dimpling of the skin on the breast
- Nipple retraction
- Rash, redness or scaliness on the nipple or breast skin
- Spontaneous discharge from the nipple
Please consult your doctor if you are unsure about a symptom.
If You Have A Family History Of Breast Cancer
UK guidelines recommend;that women with a moderate or high risk of breast cancer because of their family history should start having screening mammograms every year in their forties.
If you are younger than 40 and have an increased risk of breast cancer, you should be offered yearly;MRI scans;from the age of 30 or 40. This depends;on your level of risk.
Reasons Not To Have A Mammogram
One of the goals for the creation of Breast Cancer Awareness Month when it was started back in 1985 was to promote mammography. Of course, many of the sponsors of Breast Cancer Awareness Month stood to profit from the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer.; I have been warning women of this for over 20 years.
Here are 5 more reasons you may want to avoid mammography:
There are tried and true ways to maintain breast health, and also monitor it.;One of those ways is to pay attention to your dreams. My colleague Dr. Larry Burke has published studies showing that a;dream about having breast cancer;is often very accurate at diagnosing the problem. But, there are other, more conventional approaches, including thermography.
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Risk And Screening: The New Links
Experts say that most women are familiar with at least some of the common risk factors for breast cancer: A first-degree relative who has the disease, for example, or excessive use of alcohol.
But now new research is shedding light on many more individual factors, and in doing so driving both screening and treatment toward a more individualized approach.
“I think one of the biggest advances we are seeing now is this move towards individualized care, particularly when it comes to screening — we are getting better at determining which options are right for which women, and that’s a huge step forward,” says Therese B. Bevers, MD, associate professor in the department of clinical cancer prevention and medical director of the Cancer Prevention Center and Prevention Outreach Programs at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
One curriculum pioneering this approach is the Lynne Cohen Breast and Ovarian Cancer Preventive Care Program. Currently available in four major cancer centers across the United States, including Los Angeles, Houston, Birmingham, Ala., and New York City, the goal is to identify more personal risk factors for breast cancer and use that information to create individualized programs of defense and prevention.
Smith, who directs the program at the NYU Cancer Institute, tells WebMD that knowing your risk factors is one way to ensure you get the appropriate screenings at the correct stages of your life.
How Can You Detect Breast Cancer Early
You can detect breast cancer early by performing breast self-exams, the process of seeing and feeling for any changes in the breast area.
Currently, the American Cancer Society does not recommend breast-self exams as part of routine breast cancer screening because there is little evidence that they are effective in finding breast cancer early in people who also get regular mammograms. However, they do recognize that it can improve breast self-awareness. On the other hand, the American Society of Breast Surgeons still considers breast self-exams essential.
Knowing the normal size, shape, and appearance of your breasts will help you recognize symptoms when they occur, such as:
- Hard breast lumps or thickening that is different from other surrounding breast tissue
- Redness of the skin on the breast or nipple
- Dimpling or pitting of the breast, similar to the skin of an orange
- Skin retraction
- Bloody or clear fluid discharge from the nipple
- An area that is distinctly different from other areas around the breast
- Changes in size, shape, appearance, or feel of the breast or nipple
- A newly inverted nipple
- Peeling, scaling, crusting, or flaking of the areola or the breast
“While non-cancerous lumps are often rubbery and soft that move around like a marble, cancerous lumps tend to be harder and don’t move around as much,” says Abe.”Although most cancers will feel hard and relatively immobile, they don’t all feel that way.”
Here are the major risk factors for breast cancer:
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Who Should Have A Regular Screening Mammogram
The biggest risk factors for developing breast cancer are being a woman and getting older. BreastScreen Australia targets women aged 50 to 74, as 75% of all breast cancers occur in women over the age of 50.
- Screening mammograms are often less reliable for women under 40 years of age. The density of breast tissue in younger women often makes it difficult to detect cancers on mammograms.
- All women aged 40 to 49 years who have no breast symptoms also have free access to the BreastScreen Australia program should they choose to a have a screening mammogram.
- All women aged 50 to 74 years are encouraged to have a free mammogram every two years through BreastScreen Australia.
- Women aged 75 and over who have no breast symptoms also have free access to the BreastScreen Australia program. They should discuss whether to have a mammogram with their doctor.
American Cancer Society Recommendations For The Early Detection Of Breast Cancer
Finding breast cancer early and getting state-of-the-art cancer treatment are the most important strategies to prevent deaths from breast cancer. Breast cancer thats found early, when its small and has not spread, is easier to treat successfully. Getting regular screening tests is the most reliable way to find breast cancer early. The American Cancer Society has screening guidelines for women at average risk of breast cancer, and for those at high risk for breast cancer.
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Screening Tests Can Have Harms
Not all breast cancers will cause death or illness in a woman’s lifetime, so they may not need to be found or treated.
Decisions about screening tests can be difficult. Not all screening tests are helpful and most have harms. Before having any screening test, you may want to discuss the test with your doctor. It is important to know the harms of the test and whether it has been proven to reduce the risk of dying fromcancer.
What Is Breast Screening
Cancer screening involves testing apparently healthy people for signs that could show that a cancer is developing.
Breast screening uses a test called mammography which involves taking x-rays of the breasts. Screening can help to find breast cancers early when they are too small to see or feel. These tiny breast cancers are usually easier to treat than larger ones.
It is important to remember that screening will not prevent you from getting breast cancer but aims to find early breast cancers.
Overall, the breast screening programme finds cancer in around;9;out of every 1,000 women having screening.
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Could More Accurately Labeled Training Data Help Increase Accuracy
As we mentioned in the very beginning, developing deep neural networks in the field of radiology is the focus of many research groups. However, while having a refined network architecture is important, access to a large and well-curated dataset is crucial. There are some private and public organizations that offer mammograms that can be used as raw data to train AI systems. For example, the Cohort of Screen-Aged Women includes a total of around 2 million mammography images. However, this raw data needs to be annotated with a high level of accuracy to be useful for researchers.;
Mindy Support has experience annotating mammograms and many other medical images such as MRIs, CT scans, and many others. One interesting project we recently worked on involved annotating around 4,000 mammograms. We needed to label biopsied lesions with bounding boxes. Since the data annotators for this project needed to have a medical background, we assembled a team of 4 data annotators with experience in medical data annotation. There was also a team lead with 5+ years of medical experience along with a project manager. We were able to complete the annotations with a 98% accuracy level.;
What Is Breast Cancer Screening
Screening examinations are tests performed to find disease before symptoms begin. The goal of screening is to detect disease at its earliest and most treatable stage. In order to be widely accepted and recommended by medical practitioners, a screening program must meet a number of criteria, including reducing the number of deaths from the given disease.
Screening tests may include laboratory tests to check blood and other fluids, genetic tests that look for inherited genetic markers linked to disease, and imaging tests that produce pictures of the inside of the body. These tests are typically available to the general population; however, an individual’s needs for a specific screening test are based on factors such as age, gender and family history.
In breast cancer screening, a woman who has no signs or symptoms of breast cancer undergoes a breast examination such as:
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What Is Breast Cancer Staging
To determine the stage of your cancer, doctors look at how large your tumor is, where it is, and if it has spread. They also look at your medical history, physical exams, diagnostic tests, and tests of your tumor and lymph nodes.
- Early-stage breast cancer includes stages 0, I, II and IIIA .
- In stage 0, there are abnormal cells in the ducts or lobes of the breast. They have not broken through the wall of the duct or spread.
- In stages I, II, and IIIA, there is a tumor. It may have spread to lymph nodes under the arm, but it has not spread anywhere else.
Tests To Determine Specific Types Of Treatment
You’ll also need tests that show whether the cancer will respond to specific types of treatment.
The results of these tests can give your doctors a more complete picture of the type of cancer you have and how to treat it.
In some cases, breast cancer cells can be stimulated to grow by hormones that occur naturally in your body, such as oestrogen and progesterone.
If this is the case, the cancer may be treated by stopping the effects of the hormones or by lowering the level of these hormones in your body. This is known as hormone therapy.
During;a hormone receptor test, a sample of cancer cells will be taken from your breast and tested to see if they respond to either oestrogen or progesterone.
If the hormone is able to attach to the cancer cells using a hormone receptor, they’re known as hormone-receptor positive.
While hormones can encourage the growth of some types of breast cancer, other types are stimulated by a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 .
These types of cancers can be diagnosed using a HER2 test and are treated with medicine that blocks the effects of HER2. This is known as targeted therapy.
Want to know more?
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The Latest In Breast Cancer Detection
New breast screening technologies are offering women more individualized care — and a better chance at survival.
There is more hope for better diagnosing breast cancer thanks to new technologies.
Advances in screening technologies — including digital mammograms — combined with a better understanding of who is at highest risk means doctors are able to find cancers earlier — and prevent more women from dying.
“The fact that you cannot argue with is that breastcancercancer mortality has declined by 24% in the past 10 years — and a lot of that is due to early detection,” says Carol Lee, MD, chairwoman of the Commission on Breast Imaging for the American College of Radiology and professor of diagnostic radiology at Yale University School of Medicine.
But it’s not just screening advances helping to save lives. Experts say what also matters is learning more about the disease itself and who is at greatest risk.
“We are broadening our scope of the factors leading to the development of breast cancer, so we can now determine with far more accuracy not only who is at risk for this disease, but who is best served by various screening techniques, including the newest advances,” says Julia A. Smith, MD, director of Breast Cancer Screening and Prevention at the NYU Cancer Institute in New York City.
Do Dense Breasts Run In Families
“We notice that dense breasts tend to run in families, and there is evidence that density has a genetic link,” says Dr. Hooley.
Its important to keep in mind that if your radiologist says you have dense breast tissue, there is nothing unusual or unhealthy about your breasts. About 50 percent of all women in the United States have dense breast tissue, and its really normal, Dr. Hooley says. Be aware of your breast tissue type, so you can choose to be more vigilant about screening your breasts with additional tests for signs of cancer.
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Clearer Results Fewer Additional Tests
In November 2009, the United States Preventative Services Task Force said it recommended that women begin regular mammograms at 50 instead of 40, and that mammograms are needed only every two years instead of annually between the ages of 50 and 74. ; The Task Force concluded that the risk of additional and unnecessary testing far outweighed the benefits of annual mammogramsand I couldnt agree more.
Even before 2009, when the U.S. Preventative Task Forces changed their recommendation for women to begin mammograms at 50 and to have them every two years instead of annually, Danish researchers Ole Olsen and Peter Gotzsche concluded, after analyzing data from seven studies, that mammograms often led to needless treatments and were linked to a 20 percent increase in mastectomies, many of which were unnecessary. Dr. Getson expounded, According to the 1998 Merck Manual, for every case of breast cancer diagnosed each year, five to ten women will undergo a painful breast biopsy. This means that if a woman has an annual mammogram for ten years, she has a 50 percent chance of having a breast biopsy.
If youve ever had an unnecessary biopsy or been scared by a false positive result on a mammogram, please consider getting a thermogram.; You can always use it in conjunction with the mammogram to figure out your treatment options.
Colonoscopy Sigmoidoscopy And Stool Tests
Several screening tests have been shown to;reduce the risk of dying from colorectal cancer. Colonoscopy and sigmoidoscopy not only detect colorectal cancer early but also help prevent the disease in the first place. That’s because these tests can find abnormal colon growths that can be removed before they become cancer. Expert groups generally recommend that people who are at average risk for colorectal cancer have screening with one of these tests at ages 50 through 75. For more information, see the Tests to Detect Colorectal Cancer and Polyps fact sheet and the PDQ® Colorectal Cancer Screening summary.
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Permission To Use This Summary
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PDQ® Screening and Prevention Editorial Board. PDQ Breast Cancer Screening. Bethesda, MD: National Cancer Institute. Updated <MM/DD/YYYY>. Available at: . Accessed <MM/DD/YYYY>.
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Does The Screening Always Detect Cancer
You should always remember that not all cancer will show up on mammography, so you should still do a self-check regularly. This way, if you detect a lump, you can tell your doctor immediately and have it examined.
These tests detect cancer most of the time, but they are not 100 percent accurate. Always tell your doctor if you notice a change in your breasts.
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