The latest breast cancer detection and treatment in young women can reduce the increasing risk of breast cancer among women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, thus encouraging self-breast exams, annual checkups, and a cancer-preventive lifestyle including exercise.
Notwithstanding that more women are breast cancer survivors (the death rate has dropped by 44% in the past 30 years); the latest breast cancer detection and treatment in young women can reduce the annual 1% rise in the illness among women under 50, particularly women in their 20s.
Symptoms
The most common sign is a painless lump in the breast or underarm lymph nodes. However, other signs and symptoms include:
- Breast pain or heaviness
- Dimpling
- Swelling, thickening, or redness
- Nipple changes or discharge
Your doctor should check for any persistent changes in the breast.
How Exercise Helps Breast Cancer Survivors
Risk Factors
Most women who develop breast cancer have no known risk factors. About 30% of cases can be attributed to potentially modifiable risk factors, such as:
- Excess body weight (postmenopausal breast cancer)
- Physical inactivity
- Alcohol consumption
2024 Report On Breast Cancer
This latest report on breast cancer carried grim information for young and middle-aged women. It noted troubling and persistent disparities for some groups of women who have lower survival rates, likely due to late diagnosis and less access to high-quality treatments:
- Before the age of 50, 1 in 50 women are now expected to get breast cancer.
- Overall, 13% of women will have breast cancer in their lifetime, which is the same lifetime risk that men face for prostate cancer.
- Breast cancer is the cause of death for 42,250 women annually, just behind 59,280 lung cancer deaths, which is the top cause of cancer deaths among women.
- An estimated 310,720 women and 2,790 men will get breast cancer this year.
- 67% of women ages 40 and older had a breast cancer screening in the past 2 years.
Breast Cancer Detection
Breast cancer typically has no symptoms when it is small and easily treated. This is the reason why mammography screening is important for early detection. Therefore, the latest advice is that mammograms start no later than age 45 while considering the option to commence screening at age 40.
3D Mammograms
Traditional 2D mammograms take one image from the top and one from the side of your breast, but a 3D mammogram takes multiple images in an arc pattern. It combines them to form a three-dimensional image. This type of screening can help reduce the chance you’ll need a follow-up and may detect more cancers in women with dense breasts.
Risk-Based Screening
Researchers are working on matching your breast cancer risk factors to a screening timeline. This could catch cancer early and also reduce overdiagnosis. The best plan for you is based on your family history, genetic makeup, things in the environment, and more.
Genomic Testing
This process examines your genome (a set of genes in your body). Researchers are using information from genomic tests to learn more about breast cancer and identify new subtypes, with hopes of developing new treatments in the future.
Breast Cancer Treatment
Although women today are a lot less likely to die from breast cancer, alarming disparities remain amongst White, Asian, and Black women. These gaps need to be rectified through systematic efforts to ensure access to high-quality treatment for every woman as recommended below:
Metastatic Breast Cancer
This is when doctors use hormone therapies to treat hormone receptor-positive (HR+) breast cancers. Now they’re adding targeted therapies to these traditional treatments for metastatic or advanced HR+ or HER2+ breast cancers. This may keep the need for chemotherapy at bay for longer and extend survival.
Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
New therapies for triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) are helping some people live longer. They include sacituzumab govitecan-hziy (Trodelvy), which treats TNBC, which has spread, and pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy.
PARP Inhibitors
The FDA has approved two treatments for HER2-negative and TNBC that have the BRCA gene mutation: olaparib and talazoparib. These drugs are PARP inhibitors. PARP is a protein in your cells that helps them repair. By blocking it on cancer cells, PARP inhibitors promote cancer cell death. Compared to chemotherapy, PARP inhibitors can improve your quality of life when you have metastatic breast cancer.
HER2-Low Breast Cancer
More than half of all metastatic breast cancers have the HER2 protein at low levels on their cell surface. Instead of calling them HER2-negative, doctors now classify them as HER2-low. Clinical trials of the drug trastuzumab deruxtecan (Enhertu) show improvement in survival rates for those with this type of breast cancer.
Oncoplastic Surgery
Oncoplastic surgery is a procedure where your surgeon does both a lumpectomy or mastectomy, and also reconstructive surgery at the same time. It has better cosmetic results.
Sentinel Lymph Node Mapping
Sentinel lymph node mapping helps surgeons figure out which lymph nodes in your body are at the highest risk of having breast cancer cells. This helps narrow down which ones your doctor will remove. It also preserves more nodes, leading to a faster recovery and less swelling.
Breast Sensation Preservation
Advances in nerve-sparing and nerve-connection techniques during mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgeries are making it more likely that you can keep some feeling in your breast tissue.
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