Late child bearing leads to breast cancer. experts say

Ludhiana, India, December 30: During the symposium of 68th annual Conference of the Association of Surgeons of India (ASICON), the surgeons said that late child bearing leads to breast cancerdefine.

During the symposium, it was told that the urban population has an average incidence of 20-22 cases of breast cancerdefine per 1,000 women as compared to 6 cases in the rural areas with New Delhi having the maximum rate of incidence of breast cancer. These figures have been taken from Indian Council of Medical Research.

Cancer specialist Dr Kiran Kothari from Ahmedabad said that these days women marry late and due to this late marriage, their child bearing age (CBA) has extended beyond 30 years.

“The women in India today are at a much higher risk of breast cancer than ever before. They are emulating the West and are today more career-oriented and like the trend in the West are marrying late, delaying the child-bearing age up to 30 years or beyond, making them vulnerable to the disease,” said Dr Kothari.

He added, “It is going to take the shape of an epidemic in 10-15 years as a number of women in the country will suffer from breast cancer, making it one of the most dangerous forms of cancer. While the rate of incidence under 40 years of age in the West stands at 2 to 4 per cent, the country has 10-12 per cent rate of incidence less than 40 years now.”

The experts also showed concern over the fact that only some women come for regular check-up starting 30 years onward.

Dr Sanjeev Misra from Lucknow spoke on triple assessment of breast cancer. He said, doctors should do triple test i.e. clinical breast examination (with accuracy of 92 per cent), imaging (96 per cent accuracy) and pathological techniques (with accuracy of 96 per cent) to get hundred percent accuracy in the diagnosis of breast cancer.