Breast Cancer Diagnosis: What Every Woman Should Know?
Breast cancer diagnosis is essential for recovery, which in this case means saving life. The fact is that breast cancer is currently curable, but only when the diagnosis is made on time and correctly, and adequate treatment is started immediately.
Educational programs on television, articles in the media and health bulletins in antenatal clinics gradually did their job, and now every woman knows that it is necessary to periodically do breast self-examination in order to detect a tumor there as early as possible. However, oncologists believe that if the patient herself is able to detect a tumor, then, unfortunately, this speaks of a far-reaching stage of breast cancer, and not at all about an early stage. In addition, the breast has such a structure that the tumor may not be felt even after reaching a considerable size. Therefore, self-examination can be used as a diagnosis of breast cancer, but you should not rely too much on its informative value, and even more so, you should not cancel a routine examination by a mammologist, consoling yourself that the diagnosis can be made on your own.
Breast cancer rarely occurs in women younger than 35. From the age of 40, the incidence increases, reaching a peak at the age of 45-55. Thus, it is advisable to diagnose breast cancer annually, starting at the age of forty. There is such a concept as a risk group for a particular disease. The risk group for breast cancer includes not only women of premenopausal and climacteric age, but also women who have first-line relatives who have been diagnosed with breast or uterine cancer. First line relatives are a mother or a sibling. And if there are such cases, then a woman has an increased risk of a tumor, and she needs to undergo breast cancer diagnostics once a year, regardless of age.
The initial diagnosis of cancer is not very difficult. The presence or absence of a tumor node can be detected using mammography, X-ray examination of the breast - usually this is enough to see the absence of cancer. And with suspicious symptoms, additional diagnostics will be required, since not every lump in the chest is a malignant tumor. If there is a suspicion of cancer, then the patient is also prescribed a biopsy. Biopsy - a study when a microscopic piece of tumor tissue taken by puncture is sent to a laboratory where the cellular composition of the tumor is analyzed. If the diagnosis is confirmed, then several more studies are prescribed, the main of which is MRI. This is done in order to determine the size of the tumor, its exact position in the gland and interaction with adjacent tissues. At this stage, the diagnosis of breast cancer is already a preparation for treatment.
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