Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women with one in seven women developing breast cancer in her lifetime. In the U.S. in 2004, the American Cancer Society estimated that nearly 216,000 new cases of breast cancer in women and 1500 new cases of breast cancer in men would be diagnosed, and over 40,000 women and 400 men would die from the disease.

 

The incidence of breast cancer in women increases with age, rising sharply after the age of forty. Three quarters of invasive forms of breast cancer occur in women beyond fifty. The good news is statistics indicate that when breast cancer is diagnosed in the early stages, before it has substantially "invaded" the tissue or is still localized to one area, treatment dramatically increases the survival rate, which can be as high as 96 percent. Once spread throughout the breast, the survival rate drops to about 75 percent.

 

Cancer statistics tell us that 32 percent of women diagnosed with cancer will be diagnosed with breast cancer. These statistics also say that 15 percent of cancer deaths in women will be due to breast cancer (25 percent will be due to lung/bronchus cancer). At the same time, statistics based on populations, while useful in underscoring problems and illuminating trends, cannot and should not be used as a predictor for individuals.

 

This section is divided into multiple articles, covering:

To research other breast health topics, please use the morefocus search box, or see the related topics listed to the left.

 

Resources

American Cancer Society. (2004). Cancer statistics 2004. A Presentation from the American Cancer Society.

Jemal, A., Tiwari, R.C., Murray, T., Ghafoor, A., Samuels, A., Ward, E., Feuer, E.J., et al. (2004, January/February). Cancer statistics, 2004. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 54(1), 8-29.