Breast Cancer

What is Breast Cancer?

Breast cancer is an abnormal growth of cells within the breast tissue. It may be considered non-invasive (ductal carcinoma in situ) or invasive cancer. Treatment will be slightly different depending on the type of breast cancer and may require surgery, radiation, chemotherapy or hormone treatment.

1 in 8 women will develop breast cancer within their lifetime.

What causes breast cancer?

Risk factors for breast cancer include being female, early onset of menstruation <12yrs, late age of menopause, exposure to female hormones (HRT), personal or family history of breast cancer, and inherited familial breast cancer genes such as BRCA.

Only 1 in 10 breast cancer are linked with known abnormal genes that are passed on from family members.

What are the symptoms of breast cancer?

Many patients do not have any symptoms and a cancer may be picked up during a routine mammogram. Other symptoms include a new breast lump, breast pain or swelling, changes in the breast or nipple appearance, nipple discharge or skin rash/redness/infection.

How do you treat breast cancer?

Breast cancer treatment depends on the type of tumour and whether there is any spread of cancer at the time of diagnosis. Breast cancer typically spreads to the lymph nodes in the armpit of the affected breast first before it spreads to the rest of the body.

Typically once the diagnosis has been established (usually with an ultrasound, mammogram and core needle biopsy) the initial step is surgery to remove the tumour. This may be done either by removing the lump alone, or by performing a mastectomy (removal of the entire breast). The options for either surgery will be discussed in consultation with your surgeon.

If the cancer is invasive then a sampling or compete removal of the lymph nodes is usually performed at the same time. Sometimes depending on the results of your initial operation further surgery will be required.

After surgery is completed and your results have been discussed in a multi-disciplinary team a decision regarding further treatment will be decided. The order of treatment after surgery is generally chemotherapy, radiotherapy and then hormone therapy.

In some cases chemotherapy will be recommended prior to any surgery.

More information - https://www.cancer.org.au/cancer-information/types-of-cancer/breast-cancer