Awareness can help beat cancer
The signs are everywhere this month.
Area high school volleyball players don pink uniforms, residents prominently display pink ribbon pins and wristbands, community walks and 5K runs are held and even the fountain at Point State Park in Pittsburgh flows pink for 31 days.
These signs all point toward Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and they have for many years. In fact, the continual reduction in the breast cancer death rate in the United States in recent times means many factors are working.
Advancement in medical technology for treatment and detection, combined with the fact that more women are recognizing the importance of mammograms and clinical exams, have added up to a winning streak in the fight against cancer.
October annually brings a month's worth of attention to the disease and stresses the use of early detection, but the goal is to carry out that message 365 days of the year.
The chances are good that breast cancer will touch you or someone you know, and statistics prove that. Breast cancer will strike approximately 182,460 women this year and claim the lives of 40,480.
It is the most common cancer among women, accounting for nearly one of every three cancers diagnosed in American women, according to American Cancer Society statistics.
But men, too, suffer from the disease, as approximately 1,990 cases and 450 deaths from breast cancer in men are expected this year.
Age is a woman's single most important risk factor for developing breast cancer.
Statistics show a woman living in the United States has a 12.5 percent, or a one in eight chance, of developing breast cancer in her lifetime.
Early detection along with prompt treatment, as with any type of cancer, is the key.
Breast cancer detected early has a five-year survival rate exceeding 95 percent.
The American Cancer Society recommends women over 20 years of age perform breast self-examinations every month; women between 20-39 have a clinical breast exam every three years; and women over 40 have a clinical breast exam and mammogram every year.
It has been proven that mammograms save lives, yet nearly 13 million American women age 40 or older have never had a mammogram. Please remember that mammograms are safe and effective tests to detect breast cancers too small to be felt in a physical examination.
Locally, the month-long observance brings to light the various avenues available to area residents, whether it be mammography, self-breast examinations, information and literature or the comforting words of a cancer survivor.
Also shedding light on the disease will be the Women in Action Against Cancer Coalition of Jefferson County's annual breast cancer wreath ceremony to be held at noon Oct. 15 at the Louis and Sandra Berkman Amphitheater at Historic Fort Steuben. The ceremony is a celebration of breast cancer survivors and a remembrance of those whose lives have been touched by the disease.
Since 1990, the breast cancer death rate has dropped on average 2 percent each year. Here in the Ohio Valley, women, and men, need to do their part to keep that rate falling by performing self-examinations, visiting the doctor and having mammograms - the most important steps in the fight against breast cancer.
