Early Detection: 3 Types of Breast Screening
The good news is that you have a much better chance of
surviving breast cancer if you catch it early.
By using screening examinations—such as mammograms, clinical breast exams, and self-breast exams—and if you do have breast cancer, the doctors can find it early, before it begins to cause symptoms.
If you wait until you are having symptoms, the cancer tends to be relatively larger and more likely to have spread beyond the breast.
On the other hand, if you have regular mammograms and clinical breast exams and those tests find a cancer, it is more likely to be small and still confined to the breast.
The most important factors in predicting whether a woman will survive breast cancer are how big the cancer is and how far it has spread. Finding a breast cancer as early as possible makes it much more likely that the treatment will be successful and that the woman will survive.
Most doctors agree that early-detection tests for breast cancer save thousands of lives each year. Many more lives could be saved if more women and their health care providers took advantage of these tests.
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Last updated: 16 September, 2009
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