Breast Cancer Resources

Early Detection

There's a whole world of testing that goes along with taking care of your breasts. No matter where you are on the line between healthy breasts and breast cancer, tests can be nerve-wracking. But they're an indispensable part of:

finding breast cancer early, when it's most treatable,
helping your treatment team design the treatment that's right for you, and
determining the effectiveness of your continuing care.

There are two different stages of testing. Screening tests (such as an annual mammogram) look for signs of disease in women without symptoms; they should be part of every healthy woman's routine. Diagnostic tests (such as magnetic resonance imaging [MRI], blood tests, or bone scans) become part of the picture when breast cancer is suspected or has been diagnosed.

When doctors screen for breast cancer-just as when they screen for any disease-they look at healthy people with no symptoms to see if they can find any early signs of the disease.

A breast exam by a doctor helps find lumps that women may miss with their own self-exams. While it's true that most lumps are found by women themselves, the abnormality in a breast can be so difficult to feel that only someone with experience would recognize it. Lumps, thickening, asymmetry-changes in your breasts that you may not notice or think are "normal"-may be detected by a doctor who examines many breasts regularly. Studies show that regular self-exam, COMBINED with an annual exam by a doctor, improves the chances of detecting cancer early.

The above information was obtained from BreastCancer.org.