There will be 178,000 new cases of breast cancer diagnosed this year. For a woman in the US who lives to the age of 85, the lifetime odds for developing breast cancer are 1 in 8. The incidence of invasive breast cancer increased from 1973 to 1987 and have flattened from 1988 to 1992. The chance that a woman gets breast cancer increases as she gets older. Mortality rates remained stable from 1973 to 1988 and decreased during 1989 to 1992, perhaps due to the increase use of mammography for the early detection of invasive breast cancers and perhaps due to the increasing use of adjuvant chemotherapy.
Breast cancer is a tumor that can have serious consequences.
At the same time, breast cancer be one of the most treatable cancers. It has the capacity to grow indefinitely and to spread into and affect other parts of the body. Breast cancers are characterized as malignant because they have the ability spread, or metastasize, and cause death. Contrary to popular belief, breast cancer is not an exclusively female disease. Although the incidence of male breast cancer is considerably less than that of female breast cancer, male breast cancer does occur.