Early Breast Cancer
There are two main methods for detecting disease in your breast.
Feeling a lump.
It is recommended to do monthly breast exams on yourself, so that you know immediately when there’s a change.
A mammogram.
After 40, women should have a yearly mammogram to find cancer as early as possible, before symptoms can develop.
How is cancer confirmed?
If a lump is suspected to be cancerous, the area is often imaged through MRI, ultrasound or other techniques.
You won’t receive a definite diagnosis until after a biopsy, where a pathologist takes tissue from your tumor and examines it under a microscope to look for mutated or misbehaving cells. This happens when abnormal genes tell your cells to keep growing and dividing until finally, a cancer tumor is formed.
How will your doctor decide on treatment?
They’ll consider your clinical factors.
When determining next steps, your doctors’ most valuable resource will be your Pathology Report. It contains all the tumor information revealed by each of your diagnostic tests.
Typically, your report will include common clinical factors such as
Not all genomic tests are the same.
Genomic testing proves that there’s more to the story than clinical factors can tell us. It helps us more comprehensively understand a tumor’s behavior, including why it’s growing, how aggressive it is and what we should expect it to do in the future.
MammaPrint is a type of test that shows the likelihood of your cancer returning, while BluePrint classifies the cancer as a specific subtype.
How does genomic testing affect your treatment plan?
By gaining a deeper, molecular view into the cancer, your doctors will have a better idea of how your body is going to respond to different treatments. They’ll be able to rule out therapies that most likely won’t be effective and determine which ones have a good chance of working well.
The MammaPrint test is most helpful for deciding whether or not to use chemotherapy. A BluePrint test, on the other hand, can help your doctors choose among a variety therapies based on the cancer’s subtype.
Luminal A-Type – 73%
These cancers tend to grow slowly, are not likely to recur and usually have good outcomes. They are commonly treated with hormonal therapy since they are estrogen-receptor and/or progesterone-receptor positive. Luminal A-Type = 73% of all breast cancer cases.
Basal-Type – 13%
Also called Triple-Negative, these cancers are the most aggressive of the four types and associated with the lowest survival rates. They don’t respond well to hormonal therapies, but they can be successfully treated with pre-surgery chemotherapy. Basal-Type = 13% of all breast cancer cases.
Luminal B-Type – 10%
These cancers generally grow faster, are more likely to recur and have lower survival rates than Luminal A cancers. They don’t respond as well to hormonal treatment as Luminal A cancers, but often benefit from pre-surgery chemotherapy. Luminal B-Type = 10% of all breast cancer cases.
HER2-Type – 5%
These cancers tend to grow faster than luminal cancers and are more resistant to hormonal treatments, but can often be successfully treated with targeted therapies aimed at the HER2 protein. HER2-Type = 5% of all breast cancer cases.
- Yersal O, Barutca S. World J Clin Oncol. 2014 Aug 10; 5(3): 412-424
- Toft DJ, Cryns VL. Mol Endocrinol. 2011 Feb; 25(2): 199-211
- Yersal O, Barutca S. World J Clin Oncol. 2014 Aug 10; 5(3): 412-424
1. Yersal O, Barutca S. World J Clin Oncol. 2014 Aug 10; 5(3): 412-424
2. Toft DJ, Cryns VL. Mol Endocrinol. 2011 Feb; 25(2): 199-211
3. Yersal O, Barutca S. World J Clin Oncol. 2014 Aug 10; 5(3): 412-424
