Performing And Teaching Breast Examinations For Early Breast Cancer Detection

MammaCare, a revolutionary tool that has set standards for teaching women and clinicians how to perform clinical breast exams, is training professionals around the country to detect lumps earlier and save lives. Widely-publicized statistics inform women about the importance of early detection of cancer…

Breast Self Examination

http://ezinearticles.com/?Breast-Self-Examination-Saves-Lives!&id=1560966

 

There are many reasons why breast self-examination is so important.

1.) It is often said “knowledge is power” and this is one instance where such a statement is absolutely true. Breast cancer affects one in eight woman … it is crucial that every women take the time to learn about the facts relating to breast self examination that can dramatically impact their lives whether it be the benefits of breast self examination or an understanding of other preventive measures. Not only will you benefit from early detection should you have a problem, you will also gain a “piece of mind”. Although this benefit cannot be measured directly, we do know that chronic stress and anxiety is not good for anyone and does play a role in many chronic health problems.

2.) Breast self examination, promotes awareness about breast cancer as well as other less serious breast conditions (cysts etc.). Women are not doing exams because of their concerns about what they may find when the findings may not ultimately be a serious concern. The anxiety is real and understandable. However, after your “first” baseline self examination… regular breast self-examinations can help one become familiar with the findings and changes unique to their exam. This leads to a level of control over your health that can be empowering and make you want to share what you have learned with others.

3.) Early detection does save lives and as one who has witnessed this time and again I cannot stress enough the importance of breast self-examination. I have been a part of so many wonderful stories relating to breast cancer detection as are many clinicians who deal with breast cancer diagnosis in their practice. There is nothing more rewarding than to see patients each year whose lives have benefited from early detection as a result of findings noted on an examination. This includes those findings noted by the patient who have come in unscheduled for an evaluation as well as those detected on a routine annual examination or as an incidental finding (noted in the patient story below) as part of an unscheduled exam. For me, some of the most impressionable experiences have been the incidental findings during an unscheduled examination.

I will end with one of these most memorable experiences as a physician. One that encompasses much of what is stated about breast cancer and the concerns that can delay detection and favorable outcomes. As a physician, I am very fortunate to have experiences like this, which emphasizes the importance of breast exams to my patients and reminds myself (if I was to ever to have a doubt) of its importance.

During a preoperative examination for a hysterectomy I noted a lump (incidentally) in a 33 year old woman. When I asked her about it and whether she was aware of it, she told me she had been aware of it for a while and was too worried to have it checked out (please think about this: she did not mention to me at the time of this exam which most would think would be an optimal time to address such a concern). She is a wonderful person, intelligent and hard-working and I had known her for some time due to other gynecologic problems (requiring the hysterectomy). The lump was cancer and fortunately did not involve lymph nodes and she is considered cured. Needless to say, there are patients such as this that physicians never forget and I always liked to see her for routine follow-up knowing that I had impacted her life the way I did. One only has to think of how this scenario could have been different if the lump was not detected on this routine preoperative exam and later presented advanced and incurable.

From the patients perspective, think of how this women might have been reassured by the fact that her doctor didn’t notice anything (knowing it was there) and thus concluding to herself that it must have been nothing. I cannot stress enough that an annual exam or any office exam is only one arbitrary moment in time. A breast exam done by your clinician is no more powerful and in many ways less so than what you can do for yourself as you will be aware of the relative changes and your baseline examination.

Unfortunately, most individuals are not involved with such powerful experiences about the importance of breast self exam until it is no longer about prevention . Instead the conversation becomes one about staging and intervention and the hope for a cure.

Douglas Penta MD
Penta Medical Associates

http://healthcenterforwomen.com  (women’s health)

http://www.healthcenterforwomen.com/Educational_Resources.html  (resouce page with information on breast carncer etc.)

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http://HowToGoGreenandProfit.com  (Great Online company growing rapidly. Addresss health and environmental concerns)

Breast Cancer Screening And Clinical Breast Examination

Breast cancer detection rates and sensitivity were higher, but so were false-positive rates, among mammography centers that offered clinical breast examination in addition to mammography, according to new study published online August 31 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. There is controversy about whether adding clinical breast examination to mammography improves the accuracy of breast screening. To address this, Anna M. Chiarelli, Ph.D.