Know More About Breast Cancer

Good morning, I am Dr Dinesh Singh I am director predation oncology at Max hospital, Vaishali and today I will be talking about the most common cancer of women in India, it is breast cancer and there is no age bar. We have seen patients as young as 17 to 18 years and as old as 80 to 90 years. So every woman is at risk of getting the breast cancer, now which are the ladies which are more prone to get breast cancer when those ladies who do not have the breastfed their child, those who are very obese or those who have history of a breast cancer in their first relative like in the father, mausi, sister they are at higher risk, but then any population is at risk of developing cancer. What we need to understand is that we should be aware about our body and we should do a self breast examination every month, so that we know the change which happens in our breast over a period of time and once you notice that there is a lump in the breast, usually, pain is not initial symptom of Cancer any cancer in the body and whenever you notice that there is a lump in the breast then it has to be further investigated. The age is less than 40 years we go for an ultrasound of the breast which is more than 40 years we go for mammography of the breast. And then further investigation like a biopsy of the lump and if it is found cancerous, then we do for the test to see whether it is spread to another part of the body or not. Well, that tells us about the stage the breast cancer is and then depending upon the stage the treatment is decided. That let us say that we diagnose breast cancer at a very early stage that means it is less than 3 to 4 cm and at that time we do not need to remove the entire breast of the person to cure the person, we can remove only a portion the cancerous portion plus a little bit of arching around the tumor and in the axilla we have to do surgery to get out the nodes. For that now it is a sentinel node biopsy is done what happens in that is that we identify the draining lymph nodes we take them no we study them then and there when the patient is still under anaesthesia and if they are not cancerous then we do not take out the further lymph nodes of the axilla, if they are cancerous then we take them out. After that then the further treatments depends upon the final histopathology report of the tumor, if the tumor is very small If in case very sensitive to hormones these patients don't need any chemotherapy, radiotherapy becomes a part of the every breast conservation surgery and if that tumor is larger or it is not sensitive to hormones then we have to give chemotherapy. In chemotherapy now very latest medicines are available there are called targeted therapy and the cure rates have become very high. All the cancers especially breast cancer the side effects are very minimal, we have all the medicines which can take care of the vomiting, the infection and other side effects which are happening along with the chemotherapy. And regarding radiotherapy, the latest technology is targeted radiation or image-guided radiation along with other things we are able to do a very pinpoint radiation to the area where it should go. So that it saves the underline normal structures from getting exposed to radiations the cure rates become very high and the side effects are very low. So I will say that all the girls and all the ladies they should do a self-examination try to be familiar with their normal body oncology, diagnose cancer early to treat it properly and be the cure of cancer. Thank you.