|
|
|
|
  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|
|
|
What is Breast Cancer
 Most breast cancers begin in the milk ducts, narrow passageways that radiate throughout the breast. A few cells, for reasons that are not completely understood, start accumulating genetic mistakes that cause them to grow abnormally. Eventually the cells develop into DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ). The good thing about dcis cells is that they haven't spread beyond the milk duct. The bad thing is that they are malignant. "Some people call DCIS precancer, but it's not precancer," says Dr. Dennis Slamon, director of breast-cancer research at the UCLA School of Medicine. "It's preinvasive. It's cancer that hasn't invaded outside the breast ducts." After a tumor starts to break out of its milk duct, it's often still quite small. About the smallest tumor a mammogram can pick up is 0.5 cm to 1 cm (0.2 in. to 0.4 in.) in diameter. By contrast, the average cancers that are felt either by women or their physicians are around 2.5 cm, or about an inch. Even though mammograms still miss about 10% of all tumors, it's their ability to spot smaller tumors, which are generally easier to treat, that keeps women coming back for their annual appointment. Once the cancer puts down roots in the lymph nodes, the prognosis gets worse. The lymph nodes act as a kind of sewer system for many types of toxins and wastes. Tumors growing in the lymph nodes have a greater chance of breaking off and traveling to the bones, brain, lungs or other parts of the body, where they can seed new growths, called metastases. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
