Early Detection to Prevent Breast Cancer

After introducing the basic knowledge about the breast cancer and some of the risk factors which included our lifestyle and environmental factors, I wish to share about the prevention of breast cancer. I think this is the most important part in this breast cancer series. We have to take action to against the breast cancer!
 

Early Detection

Just like others malignant cancer, early detection of breast tumors are more treatable. When the smaller tumors are detected earlier, a more favourable and details prognosis can be done. This action reserves as the primary defence for all the women, especially for those who are 40 years old and above. There are many recommended methods to use for early detection.
 

Breast Self Exam (BSE)

Monthly breast self exam is the most inexpensive way for regular examination of breast. Although the effectiveness of this method still under questioned by some of the medical experts, the breast self exam are still considered promising and safe method of early detection, particularly for women younger than 40 who still not wish to run the screening.
 

Clinical Breast Exam (CBE)

Clinical breast exam is another less expensive way for regular examination. However, the effectiveness of CBE is still controversial although it is better than BSE. For women at low risk, doing CBE annually still can help to prevent from breast cancer.
 

Mammography

For women at average risk, I will suggest you to do the mammography. It is an effective way for prevention of breast cancer. This is the most public friendly method to detect early stage of breast cancer when still treatable. Sometimes, people will use the result of CBE combining with mammography to increase the screening reliability. However, mammography may be less effective for younger women. The mammography can detect the tumors much earlier than CBE and almost 2 years before detected by BSE. Although mammography is introduced to the public in some modern countries since 30 years ago, there are still a minority of women community do not undergo the screening in those countries. This case happens among the poor people who are unaffordable to pay for it. In addition, there are still a lot of countries that lack of this detection tool.
 

Improved Mammography

There are many effective approaches to enhance the sensitivity and specificity of mammography for breast cancer screening.

1. Digital mammography

• Improved detection rates for younger women and women with denser breasts.

2. Screen film mammography

• Higher sensitivity for women whose breast images are difficult to interpret.

3. Ultrasound

• Used to assist CBE to detect mammogram.
• Fail to detect mocrocalcification and poor specificity.

4. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

• Detecting breast cancer for women at high risk and in younger women.
• Highly sensitive after combining with mammogram and CBE.
• Essential screening tool for women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations to identify early cancer.
• Very expensive and poor specificity. Only recommended to high risk women.

 
In conclusion, earlier detection and treatment both contribute to the prevention of breast cancer. Please do not hesitate to do the earlier detection steps, at least doing BSE monthly to prevent from the developing of breast cancer cell in our body.
 

Have you doing the breast cancer screening before? Come and share with us.

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Tagged as: breast cancer, Cancer Prevention