Breast cancer is a malignant (cancerous) tumor that starts from cells of the breast. The disease occurs mostly in women, but men can get breast cancer too. The information here refers only to breast cancer in women.

A woman’s breast is made up of glands that make breast milk (lobules), ducts (small tubes that carry milk from the lobules to the nipple), fatty and connective tissue, blood vessels, and lymph (pronounced limf) vessels. Most breast cancers begin in the cells that line the ducts (ductal cancer), some begin in the lobules (lobular cancer), and the rest in other tissues.

Which is more likely to give you lung cancer, inhaling polluted city air every day, or smoking a pack of cigarettes a day?

According to a telephone survey taken by American Cancer Society researchers, most of us either think pollution is more likely to cause lung cancer than smoking — or don’t know which is worse. Unfortunately, either answer is completely at odds with decades of scientific evidence that cigarette smoking is the number one cause of lung cancer by far.

Stage 4 Cancer

The stage of a cancer is a descriptor (usually numbers I to IV) of how much the cancer has spread. The stage often takes into account the size of a tumor, how deep it has penetrated, whether it has invaded adjacent organs, if and how many lymph nodes it has metastasized to, and whether it has spread to distant organs.

Staging of cancer is important because the stage at diagnosis is the most powerful predictor of survival, and treatments are often changed based on the stage.

Cancer

Cancer is a disease characterized by disorderly division of cells, combined with the malignant behavior of these cells. Malignant cancer cells tend to spread, either by by implantation into distant sites by metastasis (the process whereby cancer cells can move through the bloodstream or lymphatic system to distant locations), or direct growth into adjacent tissue through invasion .

Most cancers can be treated and some cured, depending on the specific type, location, and stage. Once diagnosed, cancer is usually treated with a combination of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Cancer may affect people at all ages, but risk tends to increase with age. It is one of the principal causes of death in developed countries.

Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a cancer of the glandular breast tissue.

Worldwide, breast cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death (after lung cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, and colon cancer). Among women worldwide, breast cancer is the most common cancer. In 2005, breast cancer caused 502,000 deaths (7% of cancer deaths almost 1% of all deaths) worldwide.

The number of cases has significantly increased since the 1970s, a phenomenon partly blamed on modern lifestyles in the Western world. Because the breast is composed of identical tissues in males and females, breast cancer also occurs in males, though it is less common.