30% of cancers in women are breast cancers: Dr Rufina

KARACHI: A prominent professor of Surgery at the Liaquat National Hospital Karachi, Dr. Rufina Soomro has said that almost 30 percent of cancers in women were breast cancers.

She said this while speaking at the 56th Public Awareness Seminar on breast cancer held at Dr. Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research (PCMD), University of Karachi.

Dr. Rufina said that risk for breast cancer increases with age, as about 77 percent of women with breast cancer are over age 50 at the time of diagnosis.

She said that around 80 percent of women with breast cancer had no family history in Pakistan.

She informed that the chance that breast cancer would be responsible for a woman’s death was about one in 36, which was about 3 percent.

She lamented that many people in the country era were misguided by various kinds of alternate unscientific methods. She added that delay in treatment led to advance in the cancer stage caused a challenge to treat the fatal disease.

She said that risk factors of breast cancer included women over the age of 40 years, early menarche, late menopause, late first-child, alcohol use, radiation, geographic location, diet, obesity, cancer in another breast, family history, and etc.

Advances in cancer detection and treatment have increased survival rates for the most common types of cancer. she pointed out, adding that symptoms of the disease included severe nausea and vomiting, hair loss is much less common these days while managing side effects remains an important part of cancer care.

Good breast health is three steps approach including self-examination, clinical examination and mammography, she mentioned. The professor rejected the myth that alternative therapies were effective without surgery and chemo, as a cancer treatment was usually worse than the disease.

She also discarded the idea that if someone was diagnosed with cancer, he or she would probably die. Dr Somroo urged Pakistani women to stop smoking, limit alcohol intake, eat a well-balanced nutritious diet, and do physical exercise.