What Is Breast Cancer?

Cancer today has become one of the most common diseases that occur not only in India but also in the world today. Cancer has always been a heavily dreaded disease that has so long been hard enough to recover from, but nowadays, India has immensely developed in the field of medical science and uses some of the world’s most advanced technologies, and some excellently trained surgeons to treat cancer.

Breast cancer is a common type of cancer and nowadays a large population of women suffers from breast cancer. It is a type of cancer that affects the breast cells and form lumps on the breasts in the form of tumors.

Breast cancer occurs in your body when the cells and tissues of the breasts undergo abnormal and uncontrolled cell division and growth after genetic mutation and recombination. Breast cancer generally affects the breast lobules, the adipose or fatty tissues of the breasts, the fibrous connective tissues, or milk- secreting ducts of the breasts due to the mutation of the cells and therefore damages the breast cells.

Apart from directly affecting the breasts, the abnormal cells or the carcinogenic cells are often found to enter the mammary glands and its related tissues, where they damage the healthy cells too and therefore can cause severe harm to the lymph nodes and other parts of the body too.

Symptoms Of Breast Cancer

The early signs and symptoms of breast cancer may vary from one person to the other. Some may even not feel the early symptoms of breast cancer. But there are certain common symptoms that might affect a person if the breasts develop the cancer. Usually signs of development of cancer in the breasts are usually detected through biopsies and mammogram tests.

The most important symptom of breast cancer that becomes noticeable in the very first stage of breast cancer is the development of a tumor on the breast that is affected by cancer cells. Apart from this, there are also certain symptoms that commonly occur in case of breast cancer. Some such common symptoms of breast cancer can be listed here as follows:

• Leaking of blood from the nipples.
• Mild to severe pain in the breasts.
• A tumor or swelling in your under-arms.
• Nipple might become inverted (rare cases).
• Breast skin becomes either red or discolored.
• Abnormal over- all swelling in the breasts.
• The tissues surrounding the lump starts thickening.
• Size and shape of the breasts change unexpectedly and abnormally.
• The breast skin and adjacent tissues have abnormal changes in appearance.
• A fluid discharge from the nipples, but this should not be mistaken as milk leakage.
• A lump develops in the form of tumor that primarily remains benign and then turns out to be carcinogenic.

Different Types of Breast Cancer

Apart from the various types of breast cancer, there are two main types of breast cancer. They are:

• Invasive: That can easily spread from the breast, especially the breast ducts and glands to the rest of the body.
• Non- invasive or ‘in- situ’: This type of cancer does not spread.

These two broad categories of breast cancer can be further divided to describe the commonly occurred forms of breast cancer. They are as follows:

• Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS): In this type of the carcinogenic cells are not spreading out of the lymph nodes and ducts of the breasts.v
• Lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS): This is a type of breast cancer that usually develops in the milk ducts of the breasts, but do not spread from the region
• Invasive- ductal carcinoma (IDC): This type of breast cancer is the most found that develops in the milk ducts of the breasts and then the cancer cells spread in the surrounding regions
• Invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC): This type of breast cancer develops in the breast lobules and spread into the neighboring tissues.

Apart from the above- mention forms, there are also certain types of breast cancer that are not commonly found to occur. They are as follows:

• Paget disease of the nipple. Spread from the ducts of nipple to skin tissues and areola.
• Phyllodes tumor. Though the lump of this type of cancer is rare and remains benign but can sometimes develop into cancerous and grows on the connective tissue of the breast.
• Angiosarcoma. Generally found on the blood or lymph vessels in the breast.

The Stages of Breast Cancer

There are certain stages of each type of cancer and breast cancer is no exception. The stages of breast cancer are clinically classified according to the size of the lump that has occurred on the breasts and the condition of the disease inside the patient’s body. When the cancer has not spread too far, has not become too severe, and is still treatable are at the lower stages, but when the cancer is at a severe condition and there is less chance of survival, then it is marked in the higher stages. The stages of breast cancer are as follows:

For the proper diagnosis of breast cancer disease, there are certain methods that should be strictly followed. Your health care provider might ask you to follow certain steps and to maintain a proper lifestyle, along with going through certain tests. Some such tests are as follows:

1. Mammogram
2. Biopsy
3. Breast Ultrasound
4. Ultrasound of Lymph Nodes
5. Necessary blood Tests
6. MRI Scans of the breasts

Treatment Of Breast Cancer

The treatment of any kind of cancer, and thus breast cancer depends upon a good number of factors, including in which stage the cancer has currently entered, the amount of damage done, chances of recovery, and so on. But nowadays, oncologists and health care experts have invented some effective ways and clinical methods with highly advanced medical science and high- quality technological that is effective enough to treat breast cancer quite successfully. There are certain methods that are followed for the treatment of breast cancer. Some of those methods are as follows:

Surgery: Surgery is the most common type of technique that is used by doctors and most popularly referred by many oncologists and health care experts as an easy way to treat cancer, particularly any type of breast cancer. Some of the commonly used methods of surgery for the treatment of breast cancer are as follows:

• Lumpectomy: Helps to get rid of the cancer by removing the lump from the breasts through a surgery, while the other areas surrounding the breasts remain completely unaffected

• Mastectomy In this surgery the entire breast is removed. If both the breasts are affected by cancer, then a double mastectomy surgery removes both the breasts.

• Sentinel node biopsy: Just removes the lymph nodes that are affected by cancer.

Radiation therapy: Sometimes, many oncologists and health care experts suggest radiation therapy as a method of treating breast cancer. This method is unique and good enough to cure breast cancer. While performing the process of radiation therapy, a high- intensity is applied from outside the body and a light radiation is used to destroy the cancer cells.