Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – October is celebrated as Breast Cancer Awareness Month every year. This warning month was established to increase awareness and early detection of breast cancer.
Until now, breast cancer is one of the main concentrations in the world of health. In fact, breast cancer ranks first in the number of cancers in Indonesia.
Launching from the official website of the Ministry of Health (Kemenkes RI), Globocan 2020 data shows that breast cancer cases in Indonesia have reached 68,858 cases, while the death rate has reached more than 22 thousand people.
Quoting from a press statement received by CNBC Indonesia from Nalagenetics, there are three risks of breast cancer that can be detected early through DNA analysis, namely polygenic risk, clinical risk and monogenic risk.
Polygenic risk is a score to predict the risk of disease progression in the next five years. Meanwhile, monogenic risk considers certain health conditions through gene examination, such as BRCA1 or BReast CAncer1 and BRCA2 or BReast CAncer2.
Lastly, clinical risk evaluates individuals based on clinical and genetic risk categorized into high or average risk.
Samuel J. Haryono, a surgical oncology specialist at Siloam MRCCC Hospital, revealed that the causes of breast cancer vary, including genetic, lifestyle and hormonal factors.
In 2022, around 68%-73% of breast cancer cases are detected at advanced stages (stages 3 and 4), with low survival rates, around 70% and 25%. However, in the early stages (stages 1 and 2), the survival rate is more optimistic, reaching almost 100% and 90%. Low awareness of early detection is the cause of the high death rate.
“It is recommended to carry out early examinations and early screening, especially for women, in order to reduce the mortality rate and severity of the patient’s condition. Early detection can be done through routine self-examination (sadar) and clinically at the hospital. The presence of predictive test tools is quite easy It is used as an alternative for early breast cancer screening and is quite easy to use.”
How to Detect Breast Cancer
Until now, the Ministry of Health and the Indonesian Cancer Foundation have asked women to routinely carry out self-breast examinations (BSE). This is to detect breast cancer early in order to reduce the death rate by up to 43 percent. Apart from that, BSE is also a priority form of the Indonesian Government in treating breast cancer.
Generally, the symptoms of breast cancer are a painless lump in the breast, a change in the texture of the breast skin in the form of hardening with a surface resembling an orange peel, a wound that does not heal, discharge accompanied by blood spots, and a depression or pulling in the skin of the breast.
There are six BSE steps that can be taken to detect breast cancer, the Indonesian Cancer Foundation recommends doing them 7-10 days after menstruation, namely.
Stand straight with your arms dangling in front of a mirror, then pay attention to whether there are any changes to the shape and surface of the breast skin, such as swelling and/or changes to the nipples.
Place both hands above your head. In this position, check the shape and size of the breasts carefully.
Place both hands on your waist and move your arms up to your shoulders forward to see more clearly whether there are lumps in your breasts.
Press the breast in circles to feel for lumps that could potentially cause cancer.
Press the nipple gently to check whether abnormal discharge comes out.
Repeat the five steps above, but in a lying position. The method is to raise your arms up and place a small pillow under your right shoulder. In doing this step, use the tips of your fingers and press all over the breast up to around the armpit.
[Gambas:Video CNBC]
(dem/dem)