from Part II - Oncologic applications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2012
Introduction
Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer and is the second leading cause of cancermortality in women. It was estimated that 207, 090 women would be diagnosed with and 39, 840 womenwould die of cancer of the breast in 2010 in the USA. There is a rising incidence of breast cancer;however, on the brighter side, there has been a decline in mortality over the last several years(1). These changes are attributed to both early diagnosis and more effective treatment. Risk factorsfor breast cancer include age, family history and genetics, a later first pregnancy, andobesity.
Infiltrating or invasive ductal cancer is the most common histological type of breast cancer andcomprises 70–80% of all cases. Other types of breast cancer include DCIS (ductal carcinoma insitu), LCIS (lobular carcinoma in situ), and inflammatory and invasive lobular carcinoma. Tumorsinvolving the nipple are classified as Paget's disease (intraductal and invasive ductal).
Initial disease staging is a crucial step in optimizing the management of breast cancer patients.Increasingly, molecular phenotyping of breast cancer is applied to help ascertain whether the canceris likely to respond to chemotherapy or immunotherapy. A variety of factors influence the choice oftreatment options including but not limited to age, menopausal status, local disease status (e.g.,size and extent of the mass), axillary nodal disease involvement, hormone receptor status(estrogen/progesterone receptor expression), and Human Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor 2 (HER2/neu)expression.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.