DMochelle Fashions Magazine
September/October 2017
Word of The Month:
Inflammatory Breast Cancer
What is inflammatory breast cancer?
Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare and very aggressive
disease in which cancer cells block lymph vessels in the skin of the
breast. This type of breast cancer is called “inflammatory” because
the breast often looks swollen and red, or “inflamed.”
Inflammatory breast cancer accounts for 1 to 5 percent of all breast
cancers diagnosed in the United States. Most inflammatory breast
cancers are invasive ductal carcinomas, which means they developed
from cells that line the milk ducts of the breast and then spread
beyond the ducts.
Inflammatory breast cancer progresses rapidly, often in a matter of
weeks or months. Inflammatory breast cancer is either stage III or IV
at diagnosis, depending on whether cancer cells have spread only to
nearby lymph nodes or to other tissues as well.
Additional features of inflammatory breast cancer include the
following:
• Compared with other types of breast cancer, inflammatory breast
cancer tends to be diagnosed at younger ages (median age of 57
years, compared with a median age of 62 years for other types of
breast cancer).
• It is more common and diagnosed at younger ages in African
American women than in white women. The median age at diagnosis
in African American women is 54 years, compared with a median age
of 58 years in white women.
• Inflammatory breast tumors are frequently hormone receptor
negative, which means that hormone therapies, such as tamoxifen,
that interfere with the growth of cancer cells fueled by estrogen may
not be effective against these tumors.
• Inflammatory breast cancer is more common in obese women
than in women of normal weight.
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