Breast Cancer

 Breast cancer accounts for about 23% of the whole cancer cases on the world. It can occur both to men and women but it occurs hundred times more often in women than in men. It accounts for about half a million deaths every year.

Breast cancer is the type of cancer that arises either from the ducts or the lobules of the mammalian breasts so it’s differentiated to ductal carcinoma and lobular carcinoma according to its origin.

Symptoms and Signs

The most obvious sign that about 80% of the breast cancer cases discover the disease with is a lump or hardened area of the breast the feels stiffer and harder than the surrounding soft tissues either in the breast or in the armpits. Some other signs indicate that there is a breast cancer. These are a change in the nipple size or shape, a discharge from the nipple, one breast become larger or a rash occurring in the areas surrounding the nipples. These are all indicative signs of a breast cancer but for sure further investigation and clinical examination to ensure that this is a case of breast cancer.

Risk Factors

1)      Lifestyle: such as smoking tobacco which increases the rate of breast cancer, as smoking begins earlier, risk becomes higher, heavy and long term smokers have risk 35% - 50% more than others, physical activity may decrease the rate of cases by 10%.

There is probably a relationship between breast feeding and breast cancer, and also diet plays an important role; increased fat diet, alcohols, obesity and iodine deficiency may increase the risk of breast cancer.

2)      Genetic factor:  in about 5% of cases a genetic factor leads to breast-ovarian cancer syndrome, mostly in those carrying BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutated genes.

3)      Medical conditions: breast cancer may be related to other medical conditions such as atypical hyperplasia or fibrocystic breast changes.

Pathphysiology

Normal cells divide as required then they stop dividing, Cancer cells are the cells that lose the ability to stop dividing in the required time, this occurs due to the exposure of a genetically susceptible person to an external environmental factor.

Classification:

Breast cancers can classified in many ways, here is a categorization according to histopathology, grade and stage.

According to histopathology:

Breast cancers are classified into ductal or lobular carcinoma, invasive carcinomas spread from the initial tissues and are not confined.

According to grade:

Normal breast cells are differentiated so that to do their function in a proper way, cancerous cells lose their differentiation, cells start to divide and division is uncontrolled, cells are classified into (low grade) which is well differentiated and (intermediate grade) which is moderately differentiated and (high grade) which is poorly differentiated and don’t resemble the structure of the normal breast cells at all.

According to stage:

The stage of breast cancer is determined by the TNM system, which depends on (T) the size of the tumor, (N) the tumor reaches the lymph nodes or not and (M) which shows if the tumor develops metastasis or not.