Tumors & Male Breast Cancer

Video Transcript

"Finding breast cancer early is very important, and enables you to have less invasive treatment options, and actually higher survival rates. When found in its earliest stages, a stage one breast cancer patient has a 100% chance of being cancer free five years after their initial diagnosis. To demonstrate how important it is to detect breast cancer early, let's look at how a breast cancer tumor actually grows. A breast cancer tumor consists of many cells combined together creating a mass. In particular a breast cancer tumor of three millimeters resembles that tiny bead, whereas a breast cancer tumor that's allowed to grow the size of a penny is actually two centimeters in diameter. It's important to know that a breast cancer tumor grows through a process of mitosis, which is the process of a cell dividing and replicating itself. So a tumor begins, or breast cancer begins, with one cell dividing itself and creating a clone, creating two cells. Those two cells divide and replicate, creating a mass consisting of four cells, and so on. Four cells will divide and replicate and create a mass that consists of eight cells. As you can see by this simple-yet-effective demonstration, a breast cancer tumor grows by doubling its size once every 30 days, which is approximately the duration of time it takes for a breast cancer tumor cell to divide and replicate. What is important to know, that at one point in time, a small breast cancer abnormality may be small enough where it's not able to be detected by palpation, or human touch. But after a period of time, when cells are allowed to grow and replicate, the mass could suddenly become the size where it's detectable. If breast cancer cells grow at an alarmingly quick rate, then your ability to detect that abnormality will occur sooner rather than later. Therefore, it's very important to perform a monthly breast self-examination, because what you may not have been able to detect a month ago, you might be able to detect now, after that tumor was able to divide and grow. It's important, men, that you can get breast cancer as well, so check yourselves on a monthly basis, and if you detect any abnormalities or sudden changes in breast tissue, consult your physician immediately."