Aggressive Breast Cancer – Cancer In Plain English – Cancer Information

Breast Cancer: Where are we today?

RemwesMedical — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:56:42 +0000

Breast Cancer remains a very serious and important medical problem in the world. Every year, over 170,000 women and over 2,000 men will be found with breast cancer.
In the 1980s, we started to use mammograms in order to screen women for the possibility of having breast cancer. This has been a revolutionary step and a life saver for thousands of women. As we would expect, with the use of mammograms, we now find many cancers very early in their course, which in the past would have never been found until it was too late and the cancer might have already spread.
The question one would ask is: Since women now use mammograms as a way to find breast cancer early before it spreads, does this mean that we no longer find breast cancer that is advanced by the time we find it? Unfortunately, the answer is no. This is truly unfortunate.
It seems that there is a group of women who have a tendency (which is probably genetic in origin) to developing very aggressive breast cancers and that when they are found with breast cancer, their cancers are already spread. Thankfully, this is a small percentage of the women who develop breast cancer. This group of women, the ones who develop a very aggressive breast cancer from the “get go” is made up of only about 5% – 10% of all women who develop breast cancer. Research is currently ongoing to see if we can find other ways to know who are these women who develop aggressive breast cancers from the start and how to find them earlier than what is possible with a mammogram. To this end, the use of things such as the BRCA cancer genes and blood tests are being explored as a possible means of finding these women who have the tendency to develop aggressive breast cancers and to try to catch them as early as possible.
The good news is that we are making progress. The findings of new and promising ways to try to find out who are the women at risk for this aggressive form of breast cancer continue to come frequently. As we learn of them, we here at Cancer In Plain English will post them here for you in easy to understand language. Our desire is to make complicated cancer information very easy to understand so that everyone can know as much as possible. All of these concepts are as well available on the breast cancer audio CD which is available on the www.CancerInPlainEnglish.com internet web site.

Inflammatory Breast Cancer

RemwesMedical — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:12:16 +0000

Inflammatory breast cancer is a very aggressive form of breast cancer that is very different from the other forms of breast cancer and one which is very important to know.
This form of breast cancer is an infrequent form of breast cancer. It accounts for only 1% – 5% of newly diagnosed and newly found breast cancers. As such, thankfully since it is such an aggressive cancer, it is very infrequent.
A key fact to remember with inflammatory breast cancer is that there is usually NO LUMP! A woman with inflammatory breast cancer will not feel a mass or a lump. In inflammatory breast cancer, the whole breast is usually red and warm and the skin of the breast looks thick and dimpled. In fact, the skin of the breast looks so much the way the skin of an orange looks that textbooks describe the way the skin of the breast appears in inflammatory breast cancer as a “Peau d’orange” look – which literally means the “skin of an orange” look.
What this means is that breast cancer has been able to slowly infiltrate the skin of the breast and is spread all through the breast under the skin. This is such, that many times one can make a diagnosis of inflammatory breast cancer by just taking a punch biopsy of the skin of the breast.
It is very important to know that inflammatory breast cancer is a particularly aggressive and fast moving form of breast cancer. If left alone, this form of breast cancer can be rapidly fatal for the woman – sometimes in as little as three months!
As such, if a woman feels that her entire breast is red, tender, warm to the touch and the skin is thickened, she needs to see a physician right away. It is important to know that a mild infection of the skin of the breast, which is sometimes called a “mastitis” can look just like inflammatory breast cancer. Thus, if your doctor tells you that the skin of your breast is red, tender, warm to the touch and thickened because you have an infection in your breast, please make sure to ask him or her if it is possible that what is happening in your breast is not an infection of the breast but possibly an inflammatory breast cancer. All of these concepts are explained in very easy to understand language in the Breast Cancer audio CD available on the web site www.CancerInPlainEnglish.com.