Breast Cancer
Worldwide, breast cancer is the most common invasive cancer in women. (The most common form of cancer is non-invasive non-melanoma skin cancer; non-invasive cancers are generally easily cured, cause very few deaths, and are routinely excluded from cancer statistics.) Breast cancer comprises 22.9% of invasive cancers in women and 16% of all female cancers.
In 2008, breast cancer caused 458,503 deaths worldwide (13.7% of cancer deaths in women and 6.0% of all cancer deaths for men and women together). Lung cancer, the second most common cause of cancer-related death in women, caused 12.8% of cancer deaths in women (18.2% of all cancer deaths for men and women together).
The incidence of breast cancer varies greatly around the world: it is lowest in less-developed countries and greatest in the more-developed countries. In the twelve world regions, the annual age-standardized incidence rates per 100,000 women are as follows: in Eastern Asia, 18; South Central Asia, 22; sub-Saharan Africa, 22; South-Eastern Asia, 26; North Africa and Western Asia, 28; South and Central America, 42; Eastern Europe, 49; Southern Europe, 56; Northern Europe, 73; Oceania, 74; Western Europe, 78; and in North America, 90.
The number of cases worldwide has significantly increased since the 1970s, a phenomenon partly attributed to the modern lifestyles. Breast cancer is strongly related to age with only 5% of all breast cancers occurring in women under 40 years old.
Read more about Breast Cancer: History, Society and Culture, In Pregnancy, Research, In Other Animals
Famous quotes containing the words breast and/or cancer:
“He bore her away in his arms,
The handsomest young man there,
And his neck and his breast and his arms
Were drowned in her long dim hair.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I’m beginning to believe that Killer Illiteracy ought to rank near heart disease and cancer as one of the leading causes of death among Americans. What you don’t know can indeed hurt you, and so those who can neither read nor write lead miserable lives, like Richard Wright’s character, Bigger Thomas, born dead with no past or future.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)