Breast Cancer
Less common, types of breast cancer include: Medullary, Mucinous, Tubular, Metaplastic, Papillary breast cancer, Inflammatory breast cancer (a faster-growing type, ~1 - 5% of all breast cancers), Paget 's disease (cancer begins in the nipple ducts).
Breast tumour cells can metastasize (i.e. spread) to the axillary lymph nodes and to other organs - most often the bones, brain, liver and lungs. Breast cancer cells can break away from the primary tumor and enter the bloodstream or lymphatic system, where blood or lymph fluids can transport the cells around the body. The cells can then settle and form new tumors in places far from the original tumor. Commonly, doctors diagnose metastatic breast cancer after previously received treatment for an earlier stage (non-metastatic) breast cancer. When invasive surgery cuts into breast tissue to remove a tumor, there is an obvious risk that cancer cells will enter the bloodstream and metastasize.
A 2018 Finnish / Swedish study examining the routes of metastases in breast cancer (by studying cancer cell DNA) found that metastases do NOT spread from axillary lymph nodes. ". . . metastases in the axillary lymph nodes do not seem to spread further to other organs, so even if these metastases can show how aggressive the cancer is, it is not they that cause the spread," says Johan Hartman, Associate Professor at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Oncology-Pathology, one of the researchers who led the study. The study also found that in certain cases an early explosion of cancer cells from the breast tumour simultaneously gives rise to metastases in several different organs. The researchers also showed that different regions of the breast tumours caused metastases in specific organs in the body. (Ullah et al, 2018)
Globally. Breast cancer is the secondmost common cancer killer of women - only lung cancer is more deadly. Currently annually diagnosed in well over a million people globally, and killing about 500,000 people.
In the U.S. According to the National Breast cancer Foundation, there are 200,000 newly diagnosed cases of breast cancer each year, and 40,000 women each year are dying of this prolific disease. There has been a disturbing increase in the breast cancer rates over the past 50 years.
| U.S. Female Breast Cancer Rates
by region (rates per 100,000 women aged 50-74 years) |
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The 2016 death rate from breast cancer for the U.S. was 45.7. Death rate was higher among non-Hispanic black women compared with non-Hispanic white women and Hispanic women . |
Men are not immune. Although their odds of having breast cancer are about 100 times less than women; ~1,700 men will develop breast cancer and 450 will die from it each year.
- Men who work around gasoline and combustion products have a significantly higher risk of developing breast cancer. American Journal of Industrial Medicine 2000;37:349-352
