Breast Cancer Self Exam Circle Method

Video Transcript

"Hello my name is Dr. Susan Jewell and on behalf on of expert village I am going to show you how to do a breast self examination. Now, in this clip I am show you one of three methods that we use when we do self-examination and this is called the circle method. Now, let's go and see this diagram that I drawn for you. In this diagram we can see a diagrammatic figure of a woman and we’re looking at the front side of the body. So, let's orientate ourselves. This will be the right side or the right shoulder and here will be left side and the left shoulder and here's the armpit, the right armpit. We've enlarged the breast, one of the breast, this of course is the right breast, cause it's here on the right side near the right shoulder and before we start to though to talk to you about the circle method, I want to remind you that you always use the correct three digits of the hand and that's your index, your middle and the third finger and only use the fleshy portion of the fingers to use the, when doing the breast manipulation. Now, the circle method is like this, always start your examination at the axillary region we call or the armpit area here. So the area closest to the arm pit you press down using three appropriate fingers onto the breast tissue, not too soft and not too hard and you start slowly working your way pressing on the tissue as you keep moving along in this circular manner, feeling for any lumps or bumps or any irregularities that you note and jot these irregularities down on your dairy and keep working meticulously slowly into the center of the breast until you reach the nipple or the areola area. Now, I advise you do this several times, so repeat this several times and feeling again for any irregularities or bumps and write those down in your diary. Once you've done that you can then as I said note it down in your diary so that you call recall or look back at your notes when you go and see the doctor you can say oh that was the day I noticed something was wrong or I noticed this symptom so you have something to refer back to, so this is the circle method one of the three methods of doing a breast self examination."