Breast Health

Tumor marker tests include a variety of tests for cancer that can be performed on cells of a tissue sample from a newly biopsied or stored tumor. Tumor marker testing provides the patient and oncologist with vital information about the tumor at the cellular level, expanding traditional pathology reports that are based on tumor size, appearance and staging of the disease.

A Catholic doctor shares his thoughts on eary breast cancer detection with a story about its patron saint.

Breast Cancer and Breast Disease

At 30,000 feet, breast cancer awareness is probably not the first thing on an airline passenger’s mind. But Delta Airlines is trying to change all that. Delta’s “Force for Global Good” is offering $2 glasses of pink lemonade to customers and donating all proceeds to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF).

This month is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and so I feel it's an appropriate time to Reflect on my last eighteen months going down that road. I will try not to make this a sad trip but instead a hopeful one for all of us either with the disease or with loved one's going through this journey.

This week on the Women's Forum there have been two posts that have "touched home" for me. I must share with you that I was hesitant at first to answer them. Why, you are probably asking... Well they are Both subjects that I am completely familiar with and yet felt reluctant to open-up about on the forum.

Today I stood on the steps of the State House in Austin, Texas along with a thousand or so other good people who were trying to send a message to Congress to spend more money on Cancer research. We were there to support the March for Cancer taking place in our country's Capital, Washington, DC.

I was sitting in a chair today waiting for my fingernails to dry and started looking through a recent issue of Readers Digest. On page 50 is a true story about a women named Diana Golden and her journey during the last 28 years.

Janet George is a mother of three, grandmother of seven, and a breast cancer survivor. Her story began after a routine mammogram. Janet's mother died of breast cancer, so regular mammograms have always been part of her healthcare. Janet was notified that a small tumor had been found during a routine mammogram, and her cancer was diagnosed after a wire localization biopsy.

Each year, an estimated 200,000 new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in the U.S., affecting women of all races, from all walks of life. The disease can strike at any time, as the Latina music star Soraya learned when she was diagnosed in 2000 with breast cancer at the young age of 31.

How to know if you're getting good advice about Breast Disease and Breast Cancer

During the past eighteen years in my medical practice, I’ve had a direct impact (I hope a positive impact) on breast cancer treatment for over a thousand women confronting this diagnosis. During this time span the DECISION MAKING process has become increasingly complex.

I saw a long time patient yesterday in the office. Gloria drops in once a year for a checkup. She brought me a funny birthday card and we teased each other about the effects of gravity and aging. During her exam she detailed for me how much fun she and her husband Francis are having running a small entrepreneurial business (home remodeling).

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. Most of us are aware of the statistic that one out of every eight women will develop breast cancer at some point in their lifetime. However, an important point about this statistic is that most of these cancers do not occur until after the age of 50.

Recently there have been numerous references in the news about the new types of estrogens that do not cause an increased risk of breast cancer. While studies looking at an increased risk of breast cancer with traditional hormone replacement use still do not show a clear consensus, it is generally accepted that there may an increased, albeit small, risk of breast cancer with the use of traditional replacement hormones.

INFLAMMATORY BREAST CANCER (IBC) is an advanced and accelerated form of breast cancer automatically rated as Stage IIIb that usually is not detected by mammograms or ultrasounds. It requires immediate aggressive treatment with chemotherapy prior to surgery and is treated differently than more common types of breast cancer.

Talk about breast cancer and naturally, people think of the disease that is the number one cancer among women. But the truth is that breast cancer is on the rise among both women and men, and researchers think the national obesity crisis may be to blame.

Researchers from Italy have found that premenopausal breast cancer patients treated with triptorelin and chemotherapy were less likely to experience early menopause and were more likely to resume menses than patients who received chemotherapy alone.

Dr. John Collins presented a thorough review of the literature concerning the interaction of hormone replacement and breast cancer entitled "HRT and Breast Cancer: The Evidence and the Issues" with the following general conclusions

To review, the recent article in the Lancet that he discussed showed that there was a very small increased risk of breast cancer by taking hormones over a prolonged length of time. However, certainly this risk should be viewed in the overall context of risks and benefits.

The use of chemotherapy for the treatment of breast cancer can result in transient or permanent amenorrhea, and research indicates that each month of chemotherapy translates into 1.5 year of lost reproductive life. This is especially significant for women younger than 40 years, which accounts for 6% of the population diagnosed with breast cancer.

Recent studies have indicated that β-adrenergic signaling is involved in the regulation of immune responses to breast tumor cells, and data from in vivo studies show an association between β-adrenergic signaling with increased nodal involvement and development of metastasis but no effect on primary tumor growth. Based on this evidence, Dr Thomas I. Barron, from the department of pharmacology and therapeutics at Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, in Dublin, Ireland, and colleagues chose to explore the relationship between beta blocker use and breast tumor characteristics as well as breast cancer morbidity.

Menopausal Hormone Therapy and Other Breast Cancer Risk Factors in Relation to the Risk of Different Histological Subtypes of Breast Cancer: A Case-control Study

Breast cancer is a growing concern among premenopausal women. With an emphasis on this patient population, this article discusses the known risk factors for breast cancer; models for quantitative risk assessment; and strategies for modifying breast cancer risk, including screening mammography, prophylactic mastectomy, and primary pharmacologic prevention.

A report just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirmed previous studies which found that women who take hormone replacement therapy (HRT) may develop denser breast tissue, which in turn may make it more difficult to detect breast cancer through mammography.

The relationship of sex hormones and breast cancer is a matter of concern of many women. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women in industrialized countries.

FDA approval for bevacizumab (Avastin) as treatment for metastatic HER2-negative breast cancer should be withdrawn, according to a unanimous vote (6-0) of the FDA’s Oncologic Drug Advisory Committee. The committee convened at the request of the drugmaker (Genentech) to appeal an earlier decision by the FDA to remove the indication for bevacizumab to treat locally recurrent or metastatic HER2-negative breast cancer.

Upon hospital discharge it is not unusual for mothers of preterm infants to continue to meet all or most of their infants' nutritional needs through bottle feedings of expressed breast milk (EBM) because of infants' physiological immaturity and maternal concerns with an inadequacy of milk supply.

Evaluation of the Rupture of Silicone Breast Implants by Mammography, Ultrasonograpy and Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Asymptomatic Patients: Correlation with Surgical Findings

A prospective case-control study from Sweden has found long-term benefits of regular mammography screening, including a positive impact on reducing mortality.