Breast Lumps
The breasts are composed of fat, connective and glandular. In this tissue are the milk producing glands which are born 15 or 20 mammary ducts, to carry milk to the nipple, surrounded by the areola. These lobules and ducts are located in the stroma, adipose tissue, which are also blood vessels and lymphatics. The breast tissues are connected also with a group of lymph nodes, located in the armpit. These nodes are key to the diagnosis of breast cancer, since cancer cells spread to other parts of the body through the lymphatic system. When speaking of sentinel node refers precisely to the node nearest to the place where cancer is located.
Types of Breast Lumps
Not all packages that appear on the breasts are a symptom of cancer. In fact, nine out of ten lumps are benign. These noncancerous lumps or tumors can be fibrosis and glandular connective tissue, or cysts or fluid-filled sacs. Benign breast tumors (fibroadenomas) are not a danger to life and are usually easily treated. The main type of breast cancer is adenocarcinoma, which occurs in glandular tissues anywhere in the body. The specific tumors of the breast are:
*Ductal carcinoma
(located in the ducts). The ductal in situ carcicoma falls on or lactiferous ducts through which milk goes to the nipple. If left untreated, can spread beyond the milk ducts and cause metastasis. So it’s very important to detect its presence in time to prevent progression to cancer. This detection can be achieved only through specific tests such as mammography, since carcinoma in situ does not usually produce any symptoms. Invasive ductal carcinoma, or infiltrating invades the fatty tissue of the breast, from one of the ducts. Invasive carcinoma is the most common breast cancers, accounting for approximately 80 percent of all those produced.
* Lobular carcinoma or lobular
Within this type is lobular carcinoma in situ, also called lobular neoplasia. Invasive lobular carcinoma is the same filtration process that invasive ductal carcinoma to adipose tissue, but from the lobules.
*Inflammatory Breast Cancer: Less frequent.
This is a very aggressive cancer that grows quickly. It’s called inflammatory because cancer cells block the lymph vessels and this is manifested in the skin, which becomes thick and hollowed out appearance similar to that of an orange peel.
*Other types
also rare for breast cancer include mucinous or colloid, in which cancer cells produce some mucus, and medullary, invasive tumor, but with a better prognosis than other invasive cancers.
*Cancer Paget
spreads through the skin of the nipple and areola. In this type of cancer, the skin of the nipple and areola appears scaly and red, with occasional spotting. Occasionally, Paget’s disease may be associated with carcinoma in situ or invasive.
Diagnostics
Mammography is a test of X-ray imaging that detects the presence of tumor in the breast, before it is perceptible to the touch. Being the best detection method, experts recommend that all women perform this test every year from the 50-55 years. These tests can be supplemented with more specific, to detect cancer severity, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasonography, or biopsy, which takes part of the affected tissue in the laboratory to analyze the characteristics of the cancer cells.
There are several types of treatment for use in breast cancer. The therapy is applied depends on many factors, which include the stage or stage where the tumor is, whether there is metastasis, the size of the cancer and how cancer cells are. With the classification made by doctors are set to tumor size, lymph nodes affected and the degree of metastasis or spread to other organs, if any. The most used is the TNM system, developed by the American Joint Committee on Cancer. Each letter refers to a characteristic, which is defined by a number:
Prevention
The self-examination and mammograms are the most useful tools for finding suspicious breast lumps. In general, the technique of mammography facilitates the detection of small lumps difficult to predict by palpation of the breast. This type of test should be repeated annually from age 45.