Informative Essay On Breast Cancer

847 Words2 Pages

Breast Cancer

Ashley McCamey

4/15/2014

Breast cancer. The second leading cause of death among women. In the United States, over 220,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and 40,000 will die each year. In men, 2,150 will be diagnosed and only 410 will die. Statistically only 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer and the risk is generally determined by genetics, diet, and lifestyle. But what is cancer? How do people get cancer? And why is breast cancer so prevalent in women? Let’s find out. So what exactly is cancer? Doctors seem to throw that word around quite a bit. Well, cancer is actually a blanket term for a class of diseases that grow abnormal cells in the body and attack the healthy ones, which then begin reproducing very fast, causing the tissue around those cells to metastasize, or spread. So how does one get cancer? After all cancer isn’t like the flu or the common cold. You can’t just “get” it from someone else. Or can you? In studies of cancer patients, doctors have found that only 10% of breast cancer patients had a family history of cancer. So how did the other 90% get cancer? Well, some patients were smokers or …show more content…

First, after your mammogram results come back, your doctor will determine the course of treatment if a malignant tumor was discovered. Generally, if the tumor is small enough, it will be removed without the removal of the entire breast tissue. However, if the tumor has spread throughout the tissue, a mastectomy will be done. A mastectomy is the removal of the breast tissue. In this day and age, with the advancements in cancer research and treatment, this procedure can be avoided with early protection. However when most women hear that cancer is a possibility for them, they go ahead and get the mastectomy, when the reality is, only 25% of people who have the gene for breast cancer actually develop breast

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