The diagnosis will help your doctor decide on the appropriate treatment from a wide range of choices. The decision could be to have frequent follow-up exams to watch the suspicious area, or surgery to remove only the affected tissue, or surgery to remove one or both breasts. Surgery removing only the affected area is sometimes followed by radiation therapy to the breast. Statistics Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women in the United States today, other than skin cancer. Even though breast cancer is more common in older women, it also occurs in younger women and even in a small number of men.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, other than skin cancer.
It is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer. Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women aged 40 to 55. The ACS estimates that there will be about 175,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer this year among women in the United States and about 43,300 deaths from the disease. They also have an increased risk of ovarian cancer. Genetic testing can tell if a woman has these mutated genes, but it cannot predict whether a woman will get breast cancer.