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Your Questions about Breast Cancer Screening, Diagnosis, and Local Follow-up
Breast Cancer Frequence

Is it common to have breast cancer ?

Breast cancer represents 33% of all the new cases of cancer in women and remains the first cause of death from cancer .
The number of cases increases as people get older and becomes a worrying problem in respect of public health from the age of 35-40.

The probability of developing breast cancer is :

4 for every 10, 000 women	between the ages of 20 and 29	(0.04%)
4 for every 1000 women	between the ages of 30 and 39	(0.4 %)
1.49 for every 100 women	between the ages of 40 and 49	(1.49 %)
2.54 for every 100 women	between the ages of 50 and 59	(2.54 %)
3.43 for every 100 women	between the ages of 60 and 69	(3.43 %)
4.31 for every 100 women	between the ages of 70 and 79	(4.31 %)
	Total	12.21 %

That means a risk of about 13% in total lifetime. Therefore, one woman in every 9 risks being affected by the disease. Most of breast cancers (67%) are diagnosed between 45 and 75 years old, only 1% before 30 years old and 15% before 45 years old.

 

Does the number of breast cancer rise ?

Over the past 30 years, the incidence of breast cancer increased by about 3% per year without obvious reason.
Between 1975 and 1995, the increase in breast cancer incidence was by 60%, but the increase in death rate was by 8% only. The improvement in prognosis (of survival) is due to both early diagnosis and development of more efficient therapies. Changes in lifestyle (environmental factors, earlier periods, late first pregnancy, decrease in the number of pregancies, shorter time of natural breast feeding, …) may also have an impact on the risk of having breast cancer.

 

Does the probability of having breast cancer among young women is more important than before ?

We noticed that the number of breast cancer cases increases in every age bracket from the age of 35. However, we do not have recent data about less-than-35-year-old women.
 
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