Risk reduction strategies: Medical oncology

In the United States it is estimated that in 2012 more than 40,000 women will die of breast cancer and 229,060 women will be diagnosed with the disease [1]. Although early detection strategies, such as mammograms, have been successfully implemented, 10 % of women will be diagnosed with four or more lymph nodes involved [2]. It has long been thought that the steps leading to cancer development in the breast take place during a long period of time. Support of this notion comes from data in women exposed to radiation. Among patients who received chest radiation for Hodgkin's disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes, as well as the survivors of the atomic bombing, it has been found that the greatest risk of developing breast cancer is when the radiation exposure took place during the early teen years [3]. However breast cancer in those individuals occurred at least 10-15 years later. Additional data come from infants undergoing radiation to the thymic gland, a gland located in the chest, [4] and girls in puberty who received radiation during a procedure for the diagnosis of tuberculosis [5].