Breast Cancer Awareness

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As the federal government's leading funder of breast cancer research, the National Cancer Institute supports a wide range of research to improve prevention, detection, and treatment of breast cancer. NCI also funds research on follow-up care for the growing number of breast cancer survivors. Take a look at some recent advances and selected resources, including a video.

On this page

Understand Your Risk

• Understanding  Breast Changes discusses common breast changes at various times of  life, types of follow-up testing, and types of biopsies. It helps women understand their screening results and emphasizes that not all breast changes mean cancer.
• Estimating Breast Cancer Risk describes the Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool, an online tool developed by NCI and others to help health care providers estimate a woman's individual risk of breast cancer.
• The Breast Cancer Prevention Summary (PDQ®) provides an overview of factors that may raise or lower your risk of breast cancer. There is also information about clinical trials that study ways to lower the risk of developing breast cancer.
  • See a list of U.S. breast cancer prevention clinical trials that are open to new participants.
• Both men and women who have certain mutations in their BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes have an increased risk of breast cancer. See BRCA1 and BRCA2: Cancer Risk and Genetic Testing.

Steps Toward Better Detection and Treatment

Screening and Detection

• Women should get a mammogram every one to two years beginning at age 40 to check for breast changes.
  • See the NCI Fact Sheet about mammograms.
  • For an overview of tests commonly used to screen for breast cancer, see the Breast Cancer Screening (PDQ®) summary.
• Improving mammography is the goal of the NCI-supported Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium (BCSC), which gathers and pools data from around the country into a centralized database on women undergoing mammography.
  • See Improving Mammography Quality, Expanding Screening Research in the NCI Cancer Bulletin.
• See a list of U.S. breast cancer screening and detection clinical trials open to new participants.

Treatment

• The Breast Cancer Treatment (PDQ®) summary provides an overview of current standard treatment options.
  • See a list of U.S. breast cancer treatment clinical trials open to new participants.
• The NCI factsheet Adjuvant and Neoadjuvant Therapy for Breast Cancer explains side effects, risks, and benefits of two different types of breast cancer therapy.  Adjuvant therapy is treatment given after primary therapy to increase the chance of long-term survival. Neoadjuvant therapy is treatment given before primary therapy.
• Weekly Paclitaxel Improves Breast Cancer Survival summarizes the results of a randomized clinical trial showing that weekly doses of the drug paclitaxel (Taxol®) after surgery and standard chemotherapy improves disease-free and overall survival in women with breast cancer.

• "Targeted Therapies for Breast Cancer" is an animated tutorial focusing on targeted therapies that have been and are being developed to treat breast cancer. It describes important molecular pathways in breast cancer cells and discusses new therapeutic agents, including small molecules and monoclonal antibodies that target these pathways.
  • Animated/Flash Version (Flash - 15.00 min.)
  • HTML/Accessible Version (For low-bandwidth connections)

Life after Breast Cancer

• Lymphedema, a condition in which lymph fluid builds up in damaged soft body tissues and causes swelling, can be a painful side effect of breast cancer treatment.
  • For information about this condition, see the Lymphedema (PDQ®) summary.

• Slowly progressive weight lifting did not aggravate limb swelling among breast cancer survivors with lymphedema, according to a randomized clinical trial (see the story).
• Cognitive changes associated with chemotherapy for breast cancer and other kinds of cancer may, in about 20 percent of survivors, persist after treatment has ended. See Delving into Possible Mechanisms for Chemobrain in the NCI Cancer Bulletin.
• Other NCI resources related to cancer survivorship include
  • Follow-Up Care After Cancer Treatment
  • Facing Forward: Life After Cancer Treatment
  • NCI's Office of Cancer Survivorship

General Breast Cancer Information

• The Breast Cancer Home Page is NCI's gateway Web page to information about breast cancer.
• What You Need To Know About™ Breast Cancer is a patient education booklet about the disease.
• A Snapshot of Breast Cancer provides key information about  disease incidence and mortality, NCI funding trends, relevant research activities, and recent scientific advances.

Back to Top