Breast cancer - Health Hot Line - Brief Article

BEATING a professional thief like breast cancer requires all of a woman's intuition, savvy and knowledge. The disease comes to Black women like a thief in the night. How do you catch a thief? By being ever vigilant, watchful and persistent.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among African-American women, striking thousands of women each year. More than 19,000 new cases of breast cancer in Black women were expected to occur last year. How do you beat it? Prevention is the key to winning the war with breast cancer, all the experts agree. Since the 1960s there have been radical improvements in early detection, which has improved survival rates--one physician said the average size tumor detected in the 1960s was golf ball-sized, while the average tumor detected today is grape-sized. Breast cancer mortality rates have recently experienced their largest decline, yet death rates among African-American women are approximately 28 percent higher than among White women. Breast cancer ranks second among causes of cancer death among Black women, topped only by lung cancer. African-American women are more likely to die of breast cancer at almost every age than White women. Why the disparity in survival rates for Black women? Most experts agree that a major factor is that African-American women are diagnosed at later stages due to limited access, limited awareness/education of early detection and cultural and socio-economic factors.

Routine mammograms--x-rays of the breast--annual clinical breast examinations by your health care providers and monthly breast self-examinations are the tools needed to beat this disease. And even though routine mammograms are currently controversial, most experts encourage Black women to have them because they still catch tumors at the earliest stage of development.

Knowing your own body is the key to survival, and that is especially important for African-American women. According to the American Cancer Society, some of the warning signs of breast cancer include:

* A lump or thickening in the breast of armpit

* A change in the size or shape of the breast

* Discharge from the nipple

* A change in the color or texture of your breast or the dark colored skin around your breast (such as dimpling, puckering of scaliness).

Women today have many more treatment options for breast cancer than in the past. Traditionally only the extensive surgery of a total mastectomy was the best hope for survival. Today options range from lumpectomy to mastectomy and radiation therapy; systemic therapy that includes chemotherapy, hormone therapy and monoclonal antibody therapy (regulating the growth of breast cancer cells) are also options. The patient and her physician should make treatment decisions, after considering the stage of cancer, the patient's age and preferences and the risks and benefits to each treatment proposal.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group