OCTOBER: BREAST CANCER PREVENTION MONTH

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in developed countries.There are risk factors which means that it is a multifactorial disease.Some factors are personal or "intrinsic" (for example, genetic load) and other factors are related to habits "extrinsic" such as diet, lifestyle, certain treatments, etc.

Early diagnosis of breast cancer is the most important contributor to healing. What does this mean? The "smaller" the cancer, the more likely for it to be cured.

Knowing your breasts and regular visits to a gynaecologist has been and still is the best advice you can give to women. But the most specific method to diagnose millimetre-sized lesions is the mammography, followed a long ways behind by the nuclear magnetic resonance and ultrasound. This is why mamography is currently accepted as the ideal method for screening the population.

The ages to begin having a mammography and the intervals at which it hould be repeated depend on the national health programmes and the existence or not of risk factors referred to above.

A good goal for women during this month of October would be to think about and start taking the accepted preventative measures and to get a medical opinion if faced with any doubts using the methods mentioned above.

Click to learn more about breast disease and mammography.

Click to learn more about gynaecologic oncology.

Click to learn more about the study of hereditary breast cancer.