‘Breast awareness’ and ‘breast self-examination’ are not the same. What do these terms mean? Why are they confused? What can we do?

Abstract The terms ‘breast self-examination’ and ‘breast awareness’ are often used loosely, causing general confusion, with potential to cause women harm. To explore this confusion, we begin by defining their current meaning. We trace the history of these methods of early detection over the last hal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEuropean journal of cancer (1990) Vol. 44; no. 15; pp. 2118 - 2121
Main Authors Thornton, Hazel, Pillarisetti, Raghu Ram
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2008
Elsevier
Subjects
Awareness
Biological and medical sciences
Breast awareness (BA)
Breast Neoplasms - diagnosis
Breast Self-Examination
Breast self-examination (BSE)
Early detection of breast cancer
Early Diagnosis
Female
Hematology, Oncology and Palliative Medicine
History of prevention of breast cancer
Humans
Mass Screening - methods
Medical sciences
Morbidity associated with early detection
Pharmacology. Drug treatments
Terminology as Topic
Tumors
Morbidity associated with early detection
History of prevention of breast cancer
Breast awareness (BA)
Early detection of breast cancer
Breast self-examination (BSE)
Breast disease
Breast cancer
Malignant tumor
Morbidity
Prevention
Mammary gland diseases
Cancerology
Early
Diagnosis
Mammary gland
Cancer
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Summary:Abstract The terms ‘breast self-examination’ and ‘breast awareness’ are often used loosely, causing general confusion, with potential to cause women harm. To explore this confusion, we begin by defining their current meaning. We trace the history of these methods of early detection over the last half century, which has seen considerable cultural, social and attitudinal changes. Breast self-examination is not recommended. We caution that uncertainty exists about the value of practicing breast awareness: evidence is currently lacking to determine whether the benefits outweigh the harms: globally-aware research is needed. We believe that a clear and universally agreed definition of the term ‘breast awareness’ is needed, and that the confusion needs to be further exposed and debated. Meanwhile, we advocate ‘sensible alertness’.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-3
content type line 23
ObjectType-Review-1
ISSN:0959-8049
1879-0852
DOI:10.1016/j.ejca.2008.08.015