Breast Cancer Essay

What is cancer?

Cancer is a number of diseases in which irregular cells divide without control and are able to penetrate other tissues. Cancer cells spread to other parts of the body through the blood and lymph systems. As mentioned before cancer is not one disease but a number of diseases which spread over the body. There are more than 100 types of cancer which happen in different places in the body. Most type of cancers are named after the organ or tissue the cancer has taken place in. For example, if the tumor begins in the lung, it is called lung cancer. If it begins in the breast, it is called breast cancer. Cancer can be split into wider categories such as:

1. Carcinoma: This type of cancer begins in the skin or tissues that are around

A pathologist examines it and takes measurements, color, shape, etc. Before the tissue is examined by the microscope, the pathologist cuts the specimen into slim portions and stains it with different types of dyes to show parts of the cell. Then, it is viewed in the microscope. There are two ways to observe the specimen (The permanent and frozen section). To create permanent section, the specimen is placed in a fixative so that the cells become fixed and don’t change. They are kept there for several hours. To make the frozen section, the physician quickly freezes the specimen after it has been removed from the patient’s body and after that the specimen is cut into small slices by a device called the cryostat. This is a quicker way but it is often not as good as the permanent section. The common terms used to classify a patient’s results

These are:

1. Radiation: This type of treatment is also called radiotherapy. In this treatment high energy rays are focused on cancer cells. Radiotherapy uses high energy gamma rays to kill cancer cells which are made in a special machine. The goal of this treatment is to cause damage to the cancer molecules and lead them to commit suicide.

2. Gene Therapy: Gene Therapy is a new found area in the field of treatments of cancer. This type of treatment has been done before, but the results are not very successful. In this treatment, damaged genes are replaced with normal genes. If conducted correctly this can treat cancer very nicely as the damaged genes are a key in treating cancer.

3. Immunotherapy: Immunotherapy is used to boost the immune system to target cancer cell. This treatment is also new to the field of treatments of cancer.

4. Chemotherapy: This treatment is the most common way of treating cancer although it has many diverse side effects like vomiting, fatigue, weakness in the body and hair loss. The goal of chemotherapy is to use chemicals that stop the procedure of cell division of irregular cells, DNA or impaired proteins so that the irregular cells commit