Cancer - Breast Cancer
Breast cancer is a cancer of the breast tissue. Worldwide, it is the most common form of cancer in females - affecting, at some time in their lives, approximately one out of thirty-nine to one out of three women who reach age ninety in the Western world. It is the second most fatal cancer in women (after lung cancer), and the number of cases has significantly increased since the 1970s, a phenomenon partly blamed on modern lifestyles in the Western world. Because the breast is composed of identical tissues in males and females, breast cancer also occurs in males, and as statistics show, it is on a massive increase.
The diagnosis of breast cancer is established by the pathological examination of removed breast tissue. Such tissue is generally obtained at the time of surgical treatment. A number of procedures have been devised to obtain tissue or cells prior to the treatment for histological or cytological examination. Such procedures include fine-needle aspiration, nipples aspirates, ductal lavage, core needle biopsy, and local surgical biopsy. Most of these diagnostic steps, however, have some limitations as they may not yield enough tissue or miss the cancer, while the surgical biopsy already becomes an invasive procedure. Imaging tests are used to detect metastasis and include chest x-ray, bone scan, CT, MRI, and PET scanning. Ca 15.3 (carbohydrate antigen 15.3, epithelial mucin) is a tumor marker determined in blood which can be used to follow up disease activity.
Breast cancer is staged. Not only will this allow for better understanding of the disease process, but it will also facilitate interpretation of data, and determine treatment. Prognosis is closely linked to results of staging.
The mainstay of breast cancer treatment is surgery when the tumor is localized, with possible adjuvant hormonal therapy, chemotherapy, and/or radiotherapy. At present, the treatment recommendations after surgery follow a pattern. This pattern may be adapted as every two years a worldwide conference takes place in St. Gallen, Switzerland to discuss the actual results of worldwide multi-center studies. Depending on clinical criteria patients are roughly divided to high risk and low risk cases which follow different rules for therapy. Treatment possibilities include Radiation Therapy, Chemotherapy, Hormone Therapy, and Immune Therapy.
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Cancer - Breast Cancer
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