Inflammatory Breast Cancer – The Other Cancer
By Jeanna Henry

It's a well known fact that after age 40, women are encouraged to to take yearly mammograms for the early detection of breast cancer. However, there is another very serious cancer out there which involves the breast which should also be of great concern for women. Inflammatory Breast Cancer is the other cancer and this is a disorder whose symptoms fit none of the regular preventive breast cancer guidelines that women have been traditionally instructed to be cautious about. This condition may manifest without the regular signs of bleeding, inverted nipple or hard or painless masses. Usually a rash on the surface tissue of the breast or increasingly sharpening pains through the breast or maybe just a thickening sensation or a slight hardening of the entire breast maybe the only tell-tell signs.
According to physicians, Inflammatory Breast Cancer is a silent disease which is often confused with mastitis, or more simply, an infection of the breast. Symptoms are often overlooked by clinicians because they can mimic other symptoms such as insect bites or even the breast infections that women sometimes get while nursing. An underlying disorder may only be suspected after symptoms remain resistant to customary treatments of antibiotics or topical creams.

Many Inflammatory Breast Cancer patients are shocked when they receive the diagnosis. With symptoms sometimes manifesting only as a skin rash, the Obstetrician/Gynecologist may not be the first clinician of choice for the sufferer, which may further lead to delay in diagnosis. Also, the standard warning signs for prevention of breast cancer that women have grown familiar with such as lumps or masses, inverted nipple, bleeding from nipple, do not necessarily apply to this form of breast cancer. With heightened insult, its symptoms can come on relatively suddenly—over weeks or even days and may manifest with:

· Rapid, unusual increase in breast size
· Redness, rash, blotchiness on breast
· Persistent itching of breast or nipple
· Hardening or thickening of breast tissue
· Stabbing pain and/or soreness of breast
· Feverish breast
· Swelling of lymph nodes under the arm or above the collarbone
· Dimpling or ridging of the breast
· Flattening or retracting of nipple

Because yearly mammograms or ultrasounds are probably not reliable indicators due to the fact that there is no mass to be found, biopsy and MRI maybe more certain methods of detection.

The advantage of ultrasound is that it may pick up the tissue's thickening which results from Inflammatory Breast Cancer's way of layering sheets of cancer, rather than forming lumps . According to physicians, the layers of cancer that blanket the breast tissue develop from cancer cells clogging the breast’s lymph vessels. This may give the heavy, feverish sensation, that patients report. The breast may feel full or swollen, similar to that of a nursing mother.

Inflammatory Breast Cancer tends to be diagnosed at younger ages, around 57 compared to 62 years of age for all breast cancers combined. African Americans are at higher risk than Caucasians and tend to be diagnosed around the age of 50. And, though it can occur in men— about 1 in every 140 cases of male breast cancer—it usually occurs in men at an older onset age than women. Inflammatory Breast Cancer accounts for 1 to 5 percent of all breast cancer cases in the United States.

Treatment consisting of chemotherapy, targeted therapy, surgery, radiation therapy and harmonal therapy may be used to treat Inflammatory Breast Cancer. However, chemotherapy (anticancer drugs) is generally the first treatment of choice for patients with this cancer. Chemotherapy is type of treatment that affects cells throughout the body. The purpose of chemotherapy is to control or kill cancer cells, including those that may have spread to other parts of the body.

After chemotherapy, patients may undergo surgery and radiation therapy to the wall of the chest. Both radiation and surgery are local treatments that affect only cells in the tumor and the immediately surrounding area. The purpose of surgery is to remove the tumor from the body, while the purpose of radiation therapy is to destroy remaining cancer cells. Surgery to remove the breast is called a mastectomy and may also be utilized.

To learn more about Inflammatory Breast Cancer, other types of breast cancer, breast health in general or if you are suspicious about your or someone else breast health, please consult your doctor or you may refer to NCI’s Breast Cancer Home Page (http://www.cancer.gov/breast/).