Breast cancer and BSE

A cancer that occurs in the cell of the breast is known as breast cancer. This cancer can occur in the woman after their age of menopause. Breast cancer is the one of the most occurring cancer in the woman. It is the most common cancer after lung cancer (both sexes included). It is the fifth most common cancer which cause death in woman, 502,000 deaths has been reported worldwide in 2005.

Breast cancer being a major death cause among the woman is very hard to be controlled as the risk factors for the breast cancer as uncontrollable such as age, gender, genetic factor, family history, reproductive and menstrual history, race, breast density etc. Though breast cancer cannot be controlled but woman can reduce death rate if they were able to find out the breast cancer at the early stage. There are different ways to find out about the breast cancer in the early stage, such as mammogram, clinical breast exam, and Breast self-exam. Mammogram and clinical breast exam needs to be performed in the clinic so they need extra money and extra time, but the breast self-exam is the one that could be done by woman to prevent themselves from the danger of breast cancer. If woman are able to do their breast self exam after the 5-6 days of their menstrual period they can detect the condition of the breast and save themselves from metastasis cancer.

Since BSE (Breast self-exam) is the preventative and early detective of the breast cancer and does not require the money and lots of time, it is advisable to do the self-breast exam. The recent ways to do breast exam would include:
1. Ladies have to lie down, so to make spread the breast tissue evenly over the chest wall and is an thin as possible, making much easier to feel all the breast tissue, and place their right arm behind their head
2. Use the finger pads of the 3 middle fingers on their left hand to feel for lumps in the right breast. Use overlapping dime-sized circular motions of the finger pads to feel the breast tissue.
3. Use 3 different levels of pressure to feel all the breast tissue. Light pressure is needed to feel the tissue closest to the skin; medium pressure to feel a little deeper; and firm pressure to feel the tissue closest to the chest and ribs. A firm ridge in the lower curve of each breast is normal. If you're not sure how hard to press, talk with your doctor or nurse. Use each pressure to feel the breast tissue before moving on to the next spot.
4. Move around the breast in an up and down pattern starting at an imaginary line drawn straight down your side from the underarm and moving across the breast to the middle of the chest bone (sternum or breastbone). Be sure to check the entire breast area going down until you feel only ribs and up to the neck or collar bone (clavicle).
5. There is some evidence to suggest that the up-and-down pattern (sometimes called the vertical pattern) is the most effective pattern for covering the entire breast, without missing any breast tissue.
6. Repeat the exam on your left breast, using the finger pads of the right hand.
7. While standing in front of a mirror with your hands pressing firmly down on your hips, look at your breasts for any changes of size, shape, contour, or dimpling, or redness or scaliness of the nipple or breast skin. (The pressing down on the hips position contracts the chest wall muscles and enhances any breast changes.)
8. Examine each underarm while sitting up or standing and with your arm only slightly raised so you can easily feel in this area. Raising your arm straight up tightens the tissue in this area and makes it harder to examine.
This procedure of doing self breast exam is peculiar than the one which is done standing as it will give better results than the standing one. The another thing that ladies have to make sure is that they have to do their breast self exam after 5-6 days of menstrual period as during the other period of time the estrogen hormone and other hormone would led them have false results.

So for woman, it is advisable to do the BSE and find out the problem before they turns up to be the bad one and save themselves from the death or lumpectomy or breast removal.