Women - Learn to Do Breast Self-Exams Correctly

In spite of progress made in recent years, about 40,000 US women die from breast cancer annually. And even if the risk of dying from the disease has been reduced considerably, the treatments are unpleasant enough to make early diagnosis important. Each year, there are over 200,000 cases diagnosed in the USA.

One way to get a jump on starting treatment is breast self-examination. Unfortunately, most women avoid self-exams because they are worried about doing them correctly; and many more do them regularly, but incorrectly. The Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon, studied more than 600 women between 40 and 70 who had a negative mammogram within the previous 2 months. They were randomly allocated to have dietary counseling, with no mention of self-exams (controls), or 30 to 45 minutes of specific counseling (a video, practice breast exam on a silicone model, and discussion of barriers to self-exam).

Before the counseling phase about 6% of women in each group were performing what were considered adequate breast exams – defined as lasting 5 minutes, done once a month, following specific guidelines. One year after counseling 59% of the specific self-exam group were doing adequate self-exams, compared with 12% in those who only had dietary counseling.

Obviously, adequate breast self-exams can be taught with a simple program like the one in this study. (The findings of this study are to be published in the American Journal of Health Promotion.) All women over 40 should be offered a chance of instruction. If it’s difficult to get this through your physician, visit the American Cancer Society website for help.