If detected early, breast cancer can often be treated effectively with surgery that preserves the breast. In 2000, approximately 182,800 women in the United States will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and approximately 40,800 women will die from breast cancer. The lifetime risk of breast cancer is 1 in 8. An abnormality that shows up on a mammogram before physical symptoms develop.
Breast cancer starts from the mutation of a single cell in the breast.
Several mutations are thought to be necessary over a span of a number of years before the cell is in the mode of uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells we call cancer. It is hard to believe, but at the time of diagnosis, most women have probably had their breast cancer for five to eight years. Children can inherit an altered breast cancer susceptibility gene from either their mother or father. While all breast cancer is genetic in origin, most of it is not inherited. In most cases, doctors cannot explain why a woman develops breast cancer.