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Article: Inflammatory breast cancer difficult to detect
- Article from:
- The Brandon Sun
- Article date:
- February 17, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright The Brandon Sun Feb 17, 2009. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Women, beginning in their teens, are encouraged to check their breasts for lumps in an effort to detect breast cancer early.
However, one type of breast cancer - inflammatory breast cancer, or IBC - does not manifest itself in this manner.
Instead, nests or sheets of cancerous cells develop and cannot be detected by the usual means, like regular self-exams or mammograms.
"Inflammatory breast cancer is (diagnosed) on the basis of a clinical exam. When someone notices that they have an inflamed breast - it's red and swollen - often physicians will consider that they have an infected breast, which is sometimes called mastitis. It's only once they do a biopsy that they find that there is ...