Breast Disease

What Is A Breast Disease?

Breast Disease is a condition where the ducts, glands and tissues of the breast are affected.

The condition arriving thus can be distributed in two major categories:

• Malignant (where the condition can be cancerous)
• Benign (where the condition is non-cancerous)

Based on these two wide categories, Breast disease can be categorized into 8 different categories.

Types Of Breast Diseases

As we mentioned, there are two major types of breast disease, and each of them has several types in them. Here are brief details on the types of Breast diseases:

➦ Benign Breast Diseases:

Most of the cases of breast diseases are non-cancerous. They can be the effect of age, genetics, and hormonal fluctuations. Examples of such breast diseases are:

• Fibrocystic Breasts: Your breast either becomes lumpy, or it becomes like a rope in this condition. The condition and the anomaly are deeply linked with menopause.
• Cysts in the Breast: Cysts can be found in any body part. In your breast, cysts can be like soft grapes or when they become serious, they might feel like a hard knot.
• Tumors: Medically termed as Fibroadenomas, these are non-cancerous tumors, often seen in young individuals. They are often made of connective tissue and glandular tissue.
• Mastitis: It is a breast infection often found during breastfeeding. It causes pain near the nipples associated with swelling and redness of the area.
• Papilloma: These are wart-like growths in the milk-producing duct. Usually small in size, they cause discharges from the nipple, although you must not produce milk at that time.

➦ Malignant Breast Diseases:

Usually, these are cancerous and the symptoms to identify them are a sudden growth of the breast that seems to be uncontrollable.

Basically, tumors form inside and they can be diagnosed with X-ray imaging. The types of Malignant breast diseases are:

• Ductal Carcinoma in Situ: Abnormal cells are seen around the milk duct, but they won’t usually spread. They are non-invasive in nature.
• Invasive Ductal Carcinoma: Here too, the unusual and abnormal cells are seen around the milk duct, but they spread fast, surrounding the tissue.
• Invasive Lobular Carcinoma: This is the growth of abnormal cells that is seen in the milk-producing glands. They are invasive too in terms of nature.

Symptoms Indicating Breast Disease

Identifying breast disease at the initial stage is itself a big challenge. However, here are some of the tested symptoms that can indicate a breast disease and lead you to a doctor or further treatment:

• Visible Lump: You can observe a lump newly developing on your breast or even in the underarm, in the tissues connected to the breast.
• Change of Shape: A sudden change of breast shape is another indication of breast disease. It can either be changing to a rope shape or suddenly enlarging.
• Discharges: Even if there is no breastmilk, if you see regular discharges, that can be an indication of breast disease.
• Change of Color of Skin: Skin color can turn red, with some dimpling or puckering. This is another indication of breast disease. The same can be associated with an inner pain in your breast.

What Causes Breast Disease?

Breast disease can be formed due to some life procedures or can be due to lifestyle issues, such as:

• Hormonal dysfunction: The same can happen for indefinite menstrual, menopause, pregnancy complications and even for long-term use of Hormone replacement therapy.
• Inherited disorder: Genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2 are highly responsible for causing Malignant breast diseases.
• Menstrual issues: Early start of menstruation from the age of 12, and late pause at the age of 55 or more, are often causes of Menstrual issues.
• Lifestyle issues: Habits like regular consumption of alcohol, obesity before menopause, and lack of exercise in daily life can be big factors in causing breast diseases.
• Infection and injury: Bacterial infections or injuries cause breast diseases like Fat Necrosis, a form of cyst and Mastitis in the milk duct.

How To Diagnose Breast Disease?

There are three steps to identify a breast disease. Each of the stages is conversant in identifying a type of breast disease.

When one step fails to identify the disease, then only the doctor will recommend that you undergo the next stage of diagnosis. Here are the three stages of diagnosis:

• Clinical check: Your doctor will physically examine your breast lump, nipple discharge, and the skin of the breast.
• Imaging: If he finds that there is a need for a more detailed diagnosis, then he can recommend you Ultrasounds, MRIs, or Mammograms.
• Biopsy: In case of malignant breast diseases, doctors will usually recommend a biopsy test, where a small tissue sample will be tested under the microscope.

What Is The Treatment Of Breast Disease?

For every aspect of Breast disease, the treatment therapy is different. Here is a detailed version of the same (as per the study).

Disclaimer: Always consult your doctor for any sort of treatment.

Treatment Of The Benign Conditions:

• Cysts or Fibrocystic Changes: If the cysts are large and painful, fine-needle aspiration is used to drain the containing fluid. If it is a solid lump, then a lumpectomy can be the treatment.
• Mastitis: Usually found during breastfeeding, they are treated with antibiotics.

Treatment Of Malignant Conditions:

The common forms of treatment are (done after a biopsy test):

• Lumpectomy: Tumor-removing surgery.
• Mastectomy: Removing the breast entirely (done in case of spread of cancer within the breast tissues).
• Radiation Therapies: Energy beams to kill the cancer-affected cells.
• Systematic Therapies: This includes chemotherapy, Hormone therapy (if estrogen is the cause of the cancer) and Targeted therapies (HER2 protein is attacked).

Psychological Impact

Breast disease, especially cancer, can affect:

• Mental health
• Body image
• Emotional well-being

👉 Support systems and counseling are important

What Are The Limitations Of The Breast Disease Treatment?

Although highly effective, breast disease treatment has some loopholes, such as:

• Recurrence: 95% of the issues can be treated with the popular therapies, but 5% of the issues remain hidden and unidentified, which can cause recurrence of the disease.
• TNBC: Triple negative breast cancer, the name suggests that the cancer is not associated with the HER2 protein, estrogen and progesterone hormone. Most of the breast disease treatments are concentrated around these three peripheries. Since these three are not affected by this type of cancer, treatment becomes very critical.
• Brain Metastases: Usually, the treatment of breast disease is a long-term therapy. For this long duration of the therapy, often the blood-brain barrier arises and that creates issues for the treatment.
• Side effects: Often, the treatment of breast disease causes issues for the bone, heart and lungs and that might open up to a new set of diseases.