October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and for many women, the disease is all too personal, Dr. Tamara Holzer, a surgeon at Knox Community Hospital, told the Mount Vernon News.
"It hits home for a lot of women in that one in eight have someone they know or someone they love who had a mass or had cancer or died from cancer," she said. "So bringing that awareness that you're not alone is important."
Mammograms are crucial in catching the disease early before it metastasizes and becomes much harder to treat, she said.
"Nobody likes getting a mammogram, just like nobody likes getting a colonoscopy," the surgeon said. "But they save lives."
Some women think that if they can't feel a mass in their breast, then they are free of cancer, but that's not true, said Holzer.
"The mammogram gives us that look inside to see what the breast tissue is doing," she said. "We can find things when they are very small and take care of them before they become a problem."
Breast cancer is usually diagnosed in patients who are over the age of 40, said Holzer.
"But that doesn't mean we don't see breast cancer in our 30-year-olds," she said. "It absolutely happens. Just because you are young doesn't mean you should ignore a mass."
Treatments have improved over the years for breast cancer, including hormone treatment, Holzer said.
"But there are still breast cancers that are not hormonally treatable," she said. "There are other regimens that can be used for those cancers. We can offer more treatment options, and there are really good targeted therapies."
Medicine has also developed a type of testing called oncotyping, which measures distant recurrence risk to see if chemo should be offered as part of the patient’s therapy.
"They can actually take your tumor, send it in and have it tested to determine whether you need chemotherapy," Holzer said. "If it's a high number, we give them chemotherapy. If it's a low number, you may not need chemotherapy."
With treatment, many patients survive breast cancer.
"You still have to be diligent about getting your mammograms and seeing your oncologist and surgeon if you have breast cancer," she said. "It's definitely a lot more treatable than many other cancers, especially if caught early."
