Managing Breast Cancer Risk

Twenty years ago there was little interest in defining personal breast cancer risk or insight into what to offer women at high risk of breast cancer. This situation has changed markedly, partly because of the discovery of the importance of mutations in predisposing genes for breast cancer and partly because of the growing realisation that there were management options that might reduce the risk of tumour development and that breast cancer was potentially preventable. Prevention is important because although breast cancer death rates are declining in the Western world, the incidence of the disease continues to increase. In the United Kingdom there are a total of 40,000 new cases of breast cancer per year, a 25% increase in 10 years.