Breast cancer education should be intensified in rural communities - Clinical Oncologist

Clinical Oncologist at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, Naa Adorkor Aryeetey, has explained how self-breast examination can be done personally at home.

She encouraged that this self-examination should be conducted at least once a month and intensified in rural communities.

She explained that "one should sit or stand shirtless and braless in front of a mirror with your arms at your sides then face forward and look for puckering, dimpling, or changes in size, shape or symmetry to check to see if your nipples are turned in (inverted)."

She stated the common way to perform the manual part of the breast examination is lying down, "choose a bed or other flat surface to lie down on your back, when lying down, the breast tissue spreads out, making it thinner and easier to feel and to smoothly massage to find any breast lump that's painless, hard, irregularly shaped and different from surrounding breast tissue."

She again added that "one should inspect breasts with your hands pressed down on your hips, inspect your breasts with your arms raised overhead and the palms of your hands pressed together."

Naa Adorkor Aryeetey added that when all these self-examinations are performed, many women will find lumps or changes in their breasts, since some of these are normal changes that occur at various points in the menstrual cycle, but also included that finding a change or lump in your breast is not a reason to panic but to report to the hospital to seek medical attention.

Breast cancer is a type of cancer that starts in the breast. It can start in one or both breasts. Cancer starts when cells begin to grow out of control.

The month of October has been set aside to celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness to help promote education, screening, and early detection of breast cancer, raise money, honor the fallen, and support patients and survivors of breast cancer.