The World Health Organizationcommonly abbreviated WHO, has established the month of October as “Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” The reason for such designation is due to the frequency of said disease in women and the fact that it is usually detected in advanced stages, thus reducing the possibilities of a definitive cure for said disease. The medical vision that we have in the year 2024 in terms of detection, management and prognosis of this condition is very different from that which prevailed at the end of the last 20th century.
I remember that at the end of the 70’s I traveled on vacation from Chicago, where I lived, to the Dominican Republic, which is the territory where I was born. I stayed at my parents’ house and it occurred to me to ask my mother if she checked her breasts regularly. She responded that in her entire life only her husband would have had access to that intimacy and of course her ten children while breastfeeding. I asked her to allow me to feel her breasts and somewhat reluctantly she agreed. At that moment I managed to identify a small nodule in one of the breasts. Given the little remaining vacation time I made a reference to the Oncological Institute to follow up the case. Since I didn’t hear any more news, I assumed that nothing malignant had been detected.
You can read: Illusions of life
On another trip to Santo Domingo I lost my residence card and had to go to the US consulate where they gave me a route letter to be able to enter United States territory. While I was waiting in Puerto Rico for the issuance of the replacement “Green Card”, urgent matters forced me to travel to the Dominican capital with a Creole passport. The airline would not sell me the round-trip ticket without an “emergency letter” from the Dominican Consulate. The consular authorities asked me for the reason for the urgency of the flight. I mentioned the maternal case and that I was traveling to follow up on that situation. Some time later, mom was admitted to the emergency room. Health Plaza Hospital with great respiratory difficulty. He had a pleural effusion. A large amount of fluid was removed and cytological examination showed cancer cells in the lung from the primary lesion in the breast. In a relatively short period of time the neoplasm spread to the brain, thus ending the life of the loved one.
In 2017, a famous American artist visited an imaging doctor to have a routine mammogram which was interpreted as free of malignancy. Six years later the patient underwent surgery for advanced breast cancer in the same organ. An artificial intelligence program was used to reinterpret the 2017 image and the device read it as positive for breast carcinoma. Technological advances in breast imaging with artificial intelligence readers make it possible to detect lesions smaller than ten millimeters with a degree of diagnostic certainty above ninety percent. Manual palpation is a historical topic of the last 20th century. If we want to save lives and win the battle against breast cancer, mass screening of the female population is an essential requirement. Although the month of October is over, the fight against breast cancer It is the war every day of the year.
