While the successful Pink Ribbon campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer and funding for breast cancer research has fueled a growing knowledge of the disease in the United States, some of the following statistics may surprise you:
About 40% of women will discover a breast lump during their lives. 80% of them will be benign.
One out of eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime, most of them after the age of 50.
Cancer is the second-leading cause of death among women (after heart disease) and breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death (after lung cancer).
About 85% of breast cancers occur in women who have no family history of breast cancer.
35% of women who had a cancerous lump removed surgically without follow-up radiation had a breast cancer recurrence after 10 years. By comparison, only 9% of women who had radiation after the same lumpectomy surgery experienced a recurrence.
A family history of cancer in a mother or sister doubles your risk of developing breast cancer.
About 15% of breast tumors that can be felt during a physical examination don’t appear on a mammogram.
Breast cancer is 100 times more common in women, but it does occur in men. It also occurs in pets.
About 60 percent of all breast cancers are estrogen-receptor positive, or sensitive to estrogen. This type of breast cancer responds well to hormone therapy such as Femara (letrozole).
Nearly 70 percent of women who are eligible for breast reconstruction are not informed of the reconstructive options available to them, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.
230,000 American women are given a breast cancer diagnosis each year. Just under 30% of cancers in women are breast cancers.
39 million women undergo mammograms each year in the United States.
Roughly 15 percent to 20 percent of breast cancers are deadly – 40,000 American women die from breast cancer every year.
Between 1971 and 2007, the number of cancer survivors in the United States more than doubled, from 1.5 percent to 4 percent of the population.
In 2011, there were more than 2.6 million breast cancer survivors in the US.
As breast cancer research continues and breast cancer treatments evolve, much of the news is encouraging. There has been an explosion of live-saving treatments and cancer medications during the past few years, and the attitude towards breast cancer care is now one of hope and optimism.
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