Breast diseases like breast cancer mostly have an effect on women. This is since male breasts are more undeveloped than female breasts, making them more resilient to cancer. It is at times categorized into some 'types'.

Types of breast cancers
There are several types of breast cancer, although a number of them are so uncommon. Sometimes a breast tumor could be a combination of these types or a mix of invasive and in situ cancer.

- Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS): This is the most widespread type of non-invasive breast cancer. DCIS represents that the cancer is simply in the ducts. It has not extended by means of the walls of the ducts into the tissue of the breast. Almost all women with cancer at this stage could be treated. Frequently the best method to discover DCIS early is with a mammogram.

- Lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS): This state starts in the milk-making glands but does not go through the wall of the lobules. Even though not a true cancer, having LCIS raises a woman's risk of getting cancer later on. Therefore, it's significant that women with LCIS ensure they have habitual mammograms.

- Invasive (infiltrating) ductal carcinoma (IDC): This is the most widespread breast cancer. It begins in a milk passage or duct, breaks through the wall of the duct, and attacks the tissue of the breast. From there it might be able to extend to other areas of the body. It accounts for roughly 8 out of 10 invasive breast cancers.

- Invasive (infiltrating) lobular carcinoma (ILC): This cancer begins in the milk glands or lobules. It could extend to other areas of the body. Approximately 1 out of 10 invasive breast cancers are of this type.

The most usual types of breast cancer start either in your breast's milk ducts (ductal carcinoma) or in the milk-producing glands (lobular carcinoma). The point of cause is settled on by the growth of the cancer cells under a microscope.

Unusual types of breast cancer consist of inflammatory, phyllodes tumor, angiosarcoma, osteosarcoma, metaplastic, adenoid cystic carcinoma and Paget's disease of the breast. There are uncommon subtypes of invasive ductal carcinoma - tubular, mucinous, medullary and papillary as well.



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Surgery is typically the first line of assault against breast cancer. This part makes clear the various types of surgery.

As a woman with early-stage breast cancer (DCIS or Stage I, IIA, IIB, or IIIA) you might be able to decide which type of breast surgery to have. Frequently, your selection is between breast-sparing surgery (surgery that removes the cancer and leaves most of the breast) and a mastectomy (surgery that gets rid of the whole breast). Examination demonstrates that women with early-stage breast cancer who have breast-sparing surgery together with radiation therapy live as long as those who have a mastectomy. The majority women with the disease will lead long, healthy lives subsequent to treatment.

Treatment for breast cancer typically starts some weeks following diagnosis. In these weeks, you ought to meet with a surgeon, learn the details regarding your surgery options, and consider what is significant to you. Afterward decide which type of surgery to have.

Women with breast cancer have lots of treatment choices. These consist of surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and biological therapy. These alternatives are explained below. But lots of women accept more than one kind of treatment.

Cancer treatment is either local therapy or systemic therapy:

- Local therapy: Surgery and radiation therapy are local treatments. They take out or obliterate cancer in the breast. When breast cancer has extended to other areas of the body, local therapy might be utilized to manage the disease in those certain parts.

- Systemic therapy: Chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and biological therapy are systemic treatments. They come into the bloodstream and obliterate or manage cancer all through the body. A number of women with breast cancer have systemic therapy to shrink the tumor prior to surgery or radiation. Others have systemic therapy following surgery and/or radiation to put off the cancer from returning. Systemic treatments are employed for cancer that has extended too.

Judgments in relation to surgery rely on several factors. You and your doctor will settle on the type of surgery that's most suitable for you based on the stage of the cancer, the "personality" of the cancer, and what is satisfactory to you in terms of your long-term peace of mind.



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Try a little experiment next time you're out and about. Stop any woman on the street. It doesn't matter if the woman is of Asian, Indian, European or African descent, any random woman will do. Ask her if she knows someone who either has had or has survived breast cancer. Odds are she does. She may have had it herself. Or, it might be her mother, her sister, her best friend or even her daughter. Despite advances in early detection, prevention and cure, those two words still strike fear into the hearts of women all over the world.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. Offices and schools all over the U.S. will hold "Denim Day" on October 2. Runners in Houston will "race for the cure" in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. Walkers in San Francisco and Atlanta will "walk for the cure" in two- or three-day walkathons. Talk show hosts will mention the significance of the month. Yogurt manufacturers will run campaigns to collect pink lids. Pen makers and cleaning supply manufacturers will donate part of the purchase price of select pink items to breast cancer research. During October, breast cancer will be front and center in our national awareness.

What are your feelings about dedicating an entire month to focus on this sometimes deadly disease, pass out small pink ribbons and raise awareness? Apathetic maybe? Totally involved? Jealous that a disease impacting your own life doesn't get equal treatment? Does it matter to you at all, and should it? That is something only you can answer.

Many younger women with no family history, myself included, remain distanced from it - until a mammogram comes back with abnormal findings or a friend is diagnosed. Then it hits home that you could be vulnerable to this disease also. Up until then there is a certain amount of denial. We may wear the ribbon or even donate to the cause, but our hearts aren't really in it. But when it hits home, it's a rare woman who ever looks at breast cancer half-heartedly again.

Don't wait until you or someone you know gets breast cancer to begin caring about its cure and prevention. Make this the October to help raise awareness. Learn something new about it. (Did you know that you don't need a lump to have breast cancer? It's true.) Wear a pink ribbon, save the yogurt tops, when you have a choice to purchase a product that has part of the price donated to breast cancer research, choose that product. Make a donation directly. Volunteer at a hospice. Drive a woman to her chemotherapy treatment. Participate in some way. Thousands of women, maybe someone you love, might benefit in the future from your act of caring right now.



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Staging is the practice physicians employ to measure the size and location of a patient's cancer. Detecting the cancer stage is one of the most significant factors in choosing treatment alternatives. Some tests might be done to assist stage breast cancer including clinical breast examinations, biopsy, and particular imaging tests like a chest x-ray, mammogram, bone scan, CT scan, and MRI scan. Blood tests are employed to assess a woman's overall health and identify whether the cancer has extended to particular areas frequently follow imaging tests.

Breast cancer staging is convoluted, and the classification system at times alters as doctors find out more in relation to breast cancer. All the numbers and letters could be perplexing, but these facts assist you and your doctors understand as much as possible regarding your cancer.

Even though breast cancer staging is a complicated classification system that could alter as physicians learn more about the disease, it is useful for patients to know what factors physicians deem when identifying a diagnosis.

The most usual staging method, named the TNM staging system, consists of three main elements:

- Tumor (T). How big is the tumor, and has it extend to the skin or chest wall muscle? Tumor size is one of the most significant predictors of how a cancer will work.

- Node (N). Have cancer cells extended to neighboring lymph nodes? Doctors calculate how many lymph nodes beneath the arm (axillary lymph nodes) test positive for cancer, since their status powerfully relates to prognosis. Breast cancers might be illustrated as "node positive" or "node negative."

- Metastasis (M). Has the cancer extended to other, distant parts of the body?

The intention of the staging system is to assist manage the different factors and a number of the personality features of the cancer into categories, so as to:

- best understand your prognosis (the most probable result of the disease)

- direct treatment judgments (in common with other areas of your pathology report), because clinical studies of breast cancer treatments that you and your doctor will take into account are in part organized by the staging system

- give a general method to explain the extent of breast cancer for doctors and nurses all over the world, in order that outcomes of your treatment could be evaluated and comprehended.

The 0 to 4 staging system, based on data from many people with breast cancer, approximates your possibility of surviving for as a minimum five years following your diagnosis. The numbers articulate likelihood, not certainty. With advances in detection and treatment, people with breast cancer are living longer than ever before.


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Breast cancer treatment is usually a multi-pronged approach. The most common breast cancer treatment plan, in this order, involves surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and hormonal therapy. But there are many different types of breast cancer, so there are many variations in treatment. Also, the stage of breast cancer (0 through IV) will determine which treatments are best.

Surgery

Surgery is often the first step in breast cancer treatment. Removal of the lump and the cancerous tissue is imperative in most cases to keep the cancer from spreading any further. Depending on the stage (which is judged by the size and the spread of the disease) a woman with breast cancer may have a mastectomy or a lumpectomy.

A mastectomy is removal of the entire breast, where a lumpectomy saves the majority of breast tissue but removes only the lump itself and the very nearby affected breast tissue. A doctor will recommend which is the safest course of action for each type of cancer. A Stage I cancer, which has not spread beyond the lump maybe be treated with a lumpectomy and radiation, for instance, where a wider spread cancer like Stage IIB or III involves much more breast and surrounding tissues and may require a complete mastectomy for the best prognosis. During surgery, the surrounding lymph nodes may be removed as well, if the cancer could have spread to these areas. In some cases, the breast can be reconstructed during the cancer surgery or at a later time.

Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy is not always a part of breast cancer treatment. If the cancer was caught very early before it had spread into the tissues of the surrounding area or the lymph nodes, chemo may not be recommended. When it is, it's the introduction of medication given through an IV that kills system-wide cancer cells that may have spread beyond the lump or tumor that was removed. Cancer cells divide rapidly, and the substance in the chemo therapy attacks those cells. There are side effects with chemotherapy, but there are medications that can help make these much milder than they used to be.

Radiation

Radiation breast cancer treatment is usually the third stage, after surgery and chemo. This targets a specific area of the body, such as the breast, to destroy any remaining cancer cells. In some cases, surgery and radiation are given without chemotherapy, depending on how small and localized the cancer was.

The use of radiation can reduce the chances of breast cancer coming back by about 70%, and the side effects are local to the area treated, and often tolerated much better than chemo side effects.

For those with a hormone-receptor positive types of breast cancer, hormonal therapy is also given to help prevent recurrence. This therapy lowers the effectiveness and amount of estrogen in the system, which can help shrink any remaining cancer cells and prevent a relapse. For some types of this cancer, surgical removal of the reproductive organs may be an option, as well. For certain type of cancer, known as hormone-receptor negative cancer, hormonal therapy is ineffective and can even be harmful.




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While no one wants to hear of other people being stricken with cancer, celebrities with breast cancer often use their illness to help make people more aware of the risks of breast cancer as well as give others with the disease hope that they can overcome it as well.

Edie Falco

Edie Falco, star of both HBO shows "The Sopranos" and "OZ" was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was a young 40 years old, in 2003. She didn't tell people at first, but instead secretly went into treatment. She didn't reveal her cancer until after she was declared cancer free, but after that talked about openly. She was only secretive because she didn't want to be asked constantly how she was feeling and if she was all right.

Jaclyn Smith

Jaclyn Smith whom everyone knows as Kelly Garret, one of "Charlie's Angels" from the same-named TV show of the 1970s, was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 56 years old in 2002. Most cases of breast cancer occur in women who are 55 years or older. Jaclyn was treated with a lumpectomy and radiation, because the disease was caught early during a routine self-exam. She works with groups like Susan G. Komen for the Cure and talks publicly about early detection and breast cancer risks.

Christina Applegate

Christina Applegate is one of the youngest and most vocal celebrities with breast cancer. She was diagnosed in 2008 when she was only 36 years old. The former star of "Married with Children" was filming her new successful hit show "Samantha Who?" when she was diagnosed. She tested positive for a gene mutation that greatly increases the risk of breast cancer. And because her mother had also been diagnosed with breast cancer more than once, making heredity just one more risk factor for the young woman, she opted to not just have the breast with the cancer removed, but to have both removed. This double mastectomy was a preventative measure to stave off any future cancer. Applegate speaks out for the available of MRI testing for women of all income levels, because it was this test that detected her cancer early and has probably saved her life by reducing her risk of the cancer spreading or recurring.

Melissa Etheridge

Rocker Melissa Etheridge is one of the most recognizable celebrities with breast cancer. She was diagnosed at age 43 in 2004. She had a lumpectomy, which removes only the lump, and then an aggressive course of chemotherapy to help prevent spread and recurrence. She caught the cancer while giving herself a self-exam in the shower, and gave a performance in 2005 at the Grammy awards while bald, after having lost her hair to the chemotherapy. Many people in her family died of cancer, so she is now an outspoken advocate of prevention and research.



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Most of the common signs of breast cancer are signs that you'll notice right away:

Blood or discharge from a nipple

A nipple that has suddenly become inverted (a nipple that's pointing inward) or a nipple that's situated differently than it was before, or changed shape or size.

A crusty nipple or flaking skin on the nipple

Puckering, dimpling or pitting of the skin of the breast, with or without redness

Breast tenderness and pain with no other explanation such as hormones or your cycle

A change in the size or shape of the breast

Those possible signs of breast cancer are relatively easy to spot. But even though a lump or a change in a specific area of the breast is often a potential sign, this can be the hardest one for most women to detect.

That's because breast tissue is naturally lumpy in spots. A woman giving herself a breast exam may feel normal tissue and worry that it's a lump, or may feel a very small lump an mistake it for normal, glandular breast tissue. Regular mammograms can help detect lumps that you can't feel with your fingers or that are disguised as normal breast tissue. But regular self-exams can help you distinguish the difference between lumps or cysts and normal tissue.

If you feel something suspicious during a self-exam, first relax. Feel the same spot on the other breast carefully to compare. You may find that the opposite breast closely mirrors what you've found, confirming that's it the normal texture of your breasts in that area. If you don't find a matching lump or bump on the opposite breast, take a break and try not to dwell or worry. About 80% of all lumps are benign, so even if you have discovered a lump in your breast, there's a good chance that it's merely a cyst.

Later, repeat the exam to find the lump. Then recheck the other breast. You may find that the tissue seems normal now where it did not before. If you still can't find a matching texture in the other breast, then have it checked by your doctor.

Lumps are one of the most panic-inducing signs of breast cancer because everyone knows that's a possibility, even though a lump isn't likely to be anything dangerous. Another potential sign of breast cancer is even more subtle than a lump and can be missed except when you do regular exams is an area than changes without a lump being present.

If an area on your breast has grown harder or softer, that's something you want to have your doctor check into immediately. There doesn't have to be a lump present. This is one of the reasons that all women should do a monthly breast exam. The more you do the exams, the more familiar you are with your breasts. The more familiar you are with them, the sooner you'll be able to detect a change that could be one of the signs of breast cancer.




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