The Basic Knowledge About Breast Cancer

The Basic Knowledge About Breast Cancer.
Many women with bust cancer inadequacy basic knowledge about their disease, such as their cancer stage and other characteristics, according to a new study. The fall short of of knowledge was even more pronounced among minority women, the study authors found. This discovery is worrisome because knowing about a health condition can help people understand why remedying is important to follow, experts say erection. "We certainly were surprised at the number of women who knew very no about their disease," said Dr Rachel Freedman, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a medical oncologist specializing in chest cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Although the scan didn't specifically look at the reasons behind the lack of knowledge, Freedman suspects that women may be overwhelmed when they're initially diagnosed. In uniting individual doctors vary in how much dope they give and how well they explain the cancer characteristics. The study is published online Jan 26, 2015 in Cancer as explained here. Kimlin Tam Ashing, a professor at the Beckman Research Institute at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte, California, reviewed the study's findings, and said that responsive appointments may also be to denounce for the education gap.

In the survey, Freedman and her team asked 500 women four questions about their cancer including questions about tumor stage, grade, and hormone receptor status. Overall, 32 percent to 82 percent of women reported that they knew the answers to these questions. But only 20 percent to 58 percent were in point of fact correct, depending on the characteristics, the investigators found. Just 10 percent of drained women and 6 percent of vile and Hispanic women knew all of their cancer characteristics correctly, according to the study.

Cancer "stage" describes the compass of the cancer, whether it is invasive or not and if lymph nodes are confusing (stages 0 through IV). Two-thirds of milky women and about half of frowning and Hispanic women were able to correctly identify their cancer's stage, the researchers found. Cancer "grade" describes how the cancer cells appearance under the microscope and can help predict its aggressiveness. Just 24 percent of hoary women, 15 percent of black women and 19 percent of Hispanic women knew what their cancer year was, according to the study.

Two other questions asked about hormone receptor status. One asked about whether or not a cancer was HER2 positive. HER2-positive tumors investigation certain for a protein (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2) that promotes cancer cubicle growth. Almost two-thirds of white women, and just over half of black and Hispanic women were able to suffice for this question accurately, the researchers found. The other question about hormone receptor stature was whether or not the cancer was estrogen receptor-positive.

Estrogen receptor-positive cancers need estrogen to grow. Other cancers are progesterone receptor-positive. Seventy percent of silver women knew their estrogen receptor status, but fewer than half of the flagitious and Hispanic women did, the study revealed. Black and Hispanic women were less indubitably than white women to know and have correct responses in each measure. Even after the researchers took into sake women's education and their health literacy, there were still racial and ethnic differences.

While the results were disconcerting hopefully, "this is a modifiable problem". Doctors and other health care professionals can greet the knowledge gap in clinics and in practices. She recommends that breast cancer patients allure along a partner, friend or other family members. "When patients come with people, it always helps," she said, as they can memo notes for the patient or think of questions that haven't occurred to the patient.

So "I wasn't surprised, unfortunately," Ashing said of the latest study. The danger of not knowing information about your knocker cancer is that it "might influence women's decision about treatment adherence". It might also affect how well they be upheld to schedules recommended for follow-up care and testing. Along with having someone accompany you to a medical visit, she recommended that heart of hearts cancer patients ask if they can talk to another patient with the same diagnosis chile. She has deliberate this approach, known as "peer navigation," and found it to be helpful.