For secure online access to health and benefit information select Registration Information.

• Breast Cancer Screening

• Breast Cancer Risk Factors

• Breast Cancer Symptoms

• Methods of Breast Cancer Treatment

Breast Cancer Screening

Breast cancer screening has been shown to decrease your chances of dying from the disease.  Breast cancer screening includes having regular mammograms and clinical breast exams (exams done by a health care provider).

Mammography is the best tool available for detecting breast cancer at a stage when it can be still be treated.  It can detect a lump years before physical symptoms develop, and even before your health care provider can detect a lump through a clinical breast exam.

A clinical breast exam is (CBE) performed by a trained health care provider.  You should receive an annual CBE around the same time you receive your mammogram. During the exam, the provider will feel and look at your breasts for any sign of a lump or other change.

Breast Cancer Risk Factors

• Increasing age.  A woman's age is the most important risk factor for developing breast cancer.
• Family history.  Risk increases if a mother, sister, or daughter had breast cancer, especially if it was at a young age.
• Hormones.  Research states that the longer a woman is exposed to estrogen, the higher her risks are of breast cancer.

Breast Cancer Symptoms

Early breast cancer usually does not cause pain. Usually, there are no symptoms when breast cancer first develops.  However, as the cancer grows, it can cause changes that women should watch for.  They include the following:

• A lump or thickening in or near the breast or in the underarm area
• A change in the size or shape of the breast
• Nipple discharge or tenderness, or the nipple pulled back (inverted) into the breast
• Ridges or pitting of the breast (the skin looks like the skin of an orange)
• A change in the way the skin of the breast, areola, or nipple looks or feels (for example, warm, swollen, red, or scaly).

If you have any of these symptoms, please see your doctor.  Most often, they are not cancer, but it's important to check with your doctor just in case.

Methods of Breast Cancer Treatment 

• Surgery. The goal of breast cancer surgery is to remove the cancer from the breast and lymph nodes.  A lumpectomy only removes the cancerous tissue, plus some of the tissue around that is removed.  A modified radical mastectomy includes removal of the entire breast and lymph nodes under the arm, but doesn't include removal of the chest wall muscle, like a radical mastectomy does.



• Radiation therapy. Radiation (high-energy rays) is used to destroy cancer cells remaining in the breast, chest wall, or underarm area after surgery.  The radiation may come from a machine or thin tubes implanted in the chest.




• Chemotherapy.  Chemotherapy is the use of drugs to kill cancer cells.  The drugs may be given as a pill or injection.

National Cancer Institute and American Cancer Society