INTRODUCTION:
Mammals have breasts, so it is important to feed their young. Breast cancer is a type of cancer in which there is abnormal cancerous cell growth in the area of the breast that is uncontrollable and forms a tumor. If left untreated, this tumor can spread throughout the body. Breast cancer cells develop in the milk ducts and/or the lobules of the breast that produce milk. The initial form (in situ) is not dangerous. Cancer cells can invade adjacent breast tissue and spread. This results in tumors, which cause lumps or thickening.
Symptoms:
Breast cancer symptoms can be complex, especially when it is advanced. When cancer is in its early stages, most people have no symptoms.
- Breast cancer symptoms can include:
- Breast lump or thickening, often without pain
- Change in size, shape or appearance of the breast
- Dimpling, redness, pitting or other changes in the skin
- Change in nipple appearance or the skin surrounding the nipple (areola)
- Abnormal or bloody fluid from the nipple.
Treatment:
Treatment for breast cancer is determined by the subtype of cancer and the extent to which it has migrated outside of the breast to lymph nodes (stages II or III) or to other regions of the body (stage IV).
Doctors combine treatments to reduce the likelihood of the cancer returning (recurrence). These are some examples:
- Breast cancer removal surgery
- Radiation therapy to lower the risk of recurrence in the breast and adjacent tissues
- Cancer drugs, such as hormone treatments, chemotherapy, or targeted biological therapies, are used to destroy cancer cells and inhibit their spread.
- When breast cancer treatments are started early and completed, they are more effective and tolerated better.
- A lumpectomy removes only the malignant tissue, whereas a mastectomy removes the entire breast. Surgery may also remove lymph nodes to assess the cancer’s ability to spread.
Risk Factors:
Breast cancer risk factors include increasing age, obesity, harmful alcohol use, a family history of breast cancer, a history of radiation exposure, reproductive history (such as the age at which menstruation began and the age at which the first pregnancy), tobacco use, and postmenopausal hormone therapy. Approximately half of all breast cancers occur in women who have no recognized risk factors for the disease other than gender (female) and age (over 40 years). A family history of breast cancer raises the risk of developing the disease, however the majority of women diagnosed with breast cancer do not have a family history. Certain inherited high penetrance gene mutations greatly increase breast cancer risk, the most dominant being mutations in the genes BRCA1, BRCA2 and PALB-2. Removal of breast is one of the options if the cancer got severe and won’t be able to be treated by medication. This will add the financial burden on the family.
Family support:
Breast cancer is one of the most important factors that affects the physical, mental, and social health of women. Some therapeutic complications affect the patient’s self-awareness. People became low in energy and became the prey of other mental disorders due to this cancer. This cancer cost them their self-confidence and self-worthlessness. Suffering from disease, along with having the fear of death due to unbearable pain. This impairs mental health. Education and training will do wonders, but along with this, patients need family support, which encourages them to work harder and have positive thinking. This mindset makes women strong and gives them the courage to fight against breast cancer. Chemotherapies and radiotherapies are hard because they will add pain to your symptoms and make you weak.
CONCLUSION:
Cancer has various effects on people’ quality of life. The mental and emotional effects of illness, diagnostic and therapeutic measures, stress, pain, depression, and disease consequences on family, marital, and social relationships, as well as the induced economic burdens, nutritional issues, and treatment complications, are the major problems affecting patients’ life quality .Breast cancer is prevailing and affecting most of the ladies. The pain cause by cancer is also unbearable and the financial burden can also lead patient to other mental illness such as anxiety and depression.
