For many, a regular morning routine includes making a cup of coffee and having a slice of toast. A breakfast that can be ready in about 5 minutes to help get a jump start on the day.
It takes roughly the same amount of time to make a bed or empty a dishwasher. To clean your eyeglasses or jot down a grocery list.
A lot can happen in 5 minutes.
In the same amount of time, 20 people across the world will be diagnosed with breast cancer. Most of them will be women (99 – 99.5%), but men can and do get it too. 18 of those who are diagnosed will survive the cancer for at least five years. After 10 years, 17 will survive; after 15 years, 16.
The good news is that scientific breakthroughs are happening at every stage, so hopefully before too long, the deaths caused by it will be eliminated altogether.
Because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the odds are that everyone reading this has either known someone who had it or has had it themselves, we wanted to discuss ways to prevent, detect and treat breast cancer, and shine a light on the positive advancements taking place in the medical community that may help more survive it in years to come.
We must emphasise that we are not medical professionals and all who are reading this should consult with their doctor, for the best way to monitor their health.
Prevention
Though it may seem like common sense, eating a diet rich in whole foods vs. processed, getting regular exercise to maintain a healthy weight, and reducing or eliminating alcohol intake, are all actions that can help prevent breast cancer. Other positive steps to take include using ‘clean’ skincare products and household items that don’t contain harmful chemicals, avoiding tobacco and limiting exposure to air pollution (as much as that can be avoided, depending upon where you reside). For mothers, breastfeeding their children may also reduce the risk of getting breast cancer.
Those with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes are at a higher risk for getting hereditary breast cancer and in some cases may choose to have elective surgery or chemoprevention to ensure they don’t get it.
What’s incredibly exciting? A medication called Anastrozole, which was previously used to treat breast cancer was approved to be repurposed late last year in a preventative way. Nearly 300,000 healthy women across the UK who are at a moderate or high risk, became eligible to access it in hopes that it will prevent them from ever developing breast cancer. It is estimated that 2,000 lives could be saved by this preventative medicine, which is taken by tablet.
Also to note, though not only for breast cancer, the UK’s National Health Service has begun to administer cancer vaccine trials. The science behind it actually gives existing cancer patients an immunotherapy treatment trained to ‘recognize’ the cancer cells. Once it finds those cells, it is meant to destroy them and prevent them from spreading any further. The early results (for patients with both melanoma and breast cancer) are very encouraging.
Detection
You can significantly reduce your risk of death from breast cancer simply by getting regular mammograms. Early detection is easier to treat (and often less invasive). Since the 1980s when regular screenings were recommended, the death rate has been reduced by 40%.
Screenings are where our next round of good news comes in—a study in Sweden of over 80,000 women concluded that Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistants were able to detect 20% more instances of cancer than their human counterparts. A different study in Germany of over a million women found that combining the talents of human radiologists with AI systems saw an increase of 2.6% more detection.
False positive test results can also be very traumatic and disruptive until the truth is confirmed. Being told you may have a potentially deadly cancer, then being made to wait a few days for additional testing to confirm, only to find it was completely harmless dense tissue showing up is something no one should have to go through, but it happens. A lot.
Incorporating AI systems into select clinics across the UK and US reduced the false positive rates in both locations. The promising findings from this study of over 91,000 women were published in the Nature journal.
AI could also soon be used to replace biopsies and assess the effectiveness of chemotherapy before surgery is recommended, but that technology is still in its infancy.
Treatment
Thankfully for those who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, the treatments for it are also evolving rapidly. Here are just a few of the newer ways doctors can now help their patients:
Precision Oncology
Unlike standard chemotherapy, which often wipes out healthy cells in addition to killing the cancer cells, precision medicine can engineer targeted therapies to attack abnormal cells, while doing no harm to the healthy cells. While it’s in the early stages of being rolled out as regular care, the results are quite promising.
Liquid Biopsies
A less invasive option than tissue removal, which sometimes requires minor surgery, this method of biopsy instead uses a simple blood test to determine if a growth is cancerous. That procedure is now available in select places across Europe and North America.
Phesgo
In the US, a targeted therapy for certain types of breast cancers called Phesgo is now available. It reduces treatment time significantly by offering an injection vs. intravenous delivery of medicines. This means a patient that would normally spend an hour in a chair getting their treatment would average 5 minutes per visit instead, offering them a greater time to recover from the effects and less disruption to regular daily activities.
Support
If you or someone you love has received a breast cancer diagnosis, you are not alone. Here is just a small sampling of resources that offer support:
- The World Health Organization offers informative guides on their website as part of their Global Breast Cancer Initiative.
- If you are searching for new methods of treatment, breastcancertrials.org has a directory for American patients; in Canada, the Canadian Cancer Trials Group offers a similar resource. Cancer Research UK can help those in the United Kingdom. Breast Cancer Trials offers resources to those in Australia.
- Survivingbreastcancer.org helps patients and families navigate the stages of the disease.
- Hisbreastcancer.org specifically helps men who have received a positive diagnosis.
- Pink Daisy Project supplies young women who are battling breast cancer in the US with gift cards to alleviate the stresses of preparing meals, cleaning their homes and shopping for groceries.
We send our love to all who are currently navigating the impacts of breast cancer, amongst others and are hopeful that the exciting developments in medicine and technology prevent others from enduring the pain of a positive diagnosis…
“Floating,” by Julian Lennon, © 2010 is available for purchase as a fine art photography print via Artsy. Posters of the same image can also be found at the Julian Lennon Store.
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