The three main risk factors for breast cancer
1. Being a woman – over 99% of new cases of breast cancer are in women.
2. Getting older – more than 80% of breast cancers occur in women over the age of 50. Most men who get breast cancer are over 60.
3. Significant family history – this isn’t common, around 5% of people diagnosed with breast cancer have inherited a faulty BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene.
Breast cancer diagnosis
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, one person is diagnosed every 10 minutes.
1 in 8 women in the UK will develop breast cancer in their lifetime.
This Breast Cancer Awareness Month around 5,000 people will be diagnosed.
Breast cancer and survivorship
Breast cancer survival is improving and has doubled in the past 40 years in the UK.
Almost 9 in 10 women survive breast cancer for five years or more.
Every year around 11,500 people die from breast cancer in the UK.
An estimated 691,000 are alive in the UK after a diagnosis of breast cancer. This is predicted to rise to 840,000 in 2020. For many the overwhelming emotional and physical effects of the disease can be long-lasting.
A Breast Cancer Care survey found 1 in 4 women (26%) found the end of treatment the hardest part of breast cancer and only 1 in 10 (10%) said they felt positive and ready to move on when they were discharged from hospital treatment. More than half (53%) struggled with anxiety at the end of treatment and nearly a third (31%) with depression.
Information and images from Breast Cancer Care
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Image from https://knowyourlemons.com/