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Inflammatory Breast Cancer
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Inflammatory breast cancer is a rare cancer of the breast. It develops extremely rapidly. The breast affected by inflammatory breast cancer is quickly red, swollen and tender to the touch. It occurs when certain cancer cells block the lymph vessels causing fluid buildup and inflammation of the breast. This is a cancer that can quickly spread to lymph nodes and lymph tissue so it is considered advanced, no matter how long a person has had it or how advanced it actually looks.
Inflammatory breast cancer looks a lot like a breast infection. It is only when the infection does not clear up that inflammatory breast cancer is suspected. You need to seek medical attention immediately if you develop redness or swelling of a breast.
Signs and symptoms of this type of breast cancer can include a change in appearance of the affected breast when compared to the other breast that occurs over a few days to a few weeks. The skin is thick and dimpled like an orange. One breast is larger than the other. The affected breast is discolored and can be bruised-appearing, purple or pink. In addition, the affected breast is warmer than the other breast. There is tenderness, itching, aching or pain in the affected breast and enlarged lymph nodes show up in the axilla of that side of the breast. The nipple can become inverted or can flatten out. There is generally no lump in the breast.
No one knows exactly what causes inflammatory breast cancer. The beginning of inflammatory breast cancer is a single cell that mutates to form a cancer. The cells don't form a lump but instead grow within the lymph ducts of the breast. The breast cancer cells also infiltrate the skin of the breast, causing symptoms of itching and redness.
Risk factors for inflammatory breast cancer include being a woman, although men can get it, too. Black women have a higher inflammatory breast cancer risk. Being of an older age means you are more likely to get inflammatory breast cancer than young women.
Doctors can diagnose inflammatory breast cancer by doing a physical examination and by doing a breast biopsy of the breast tissue and skin. Imaging testing, such as mammogram or breast ultrasound, can look for the common thickened skin of this type of breast cancer.
Doctors can stage inflammatory breast cancer using a CT scan of the body and a chest X-ray, which will look for lung tumors. Bone scans can detect disease that has affected the bone. There are two stages of breast cancer, including stage IIIb, which means locally-advanced breast cancer that has spread to lymph nodes. There is also stage IV, which is metastatic disease-spread to other areas of the body.
The treatment for inflammatory breast cancer is different from regular breast cancer. Instead of doing surgery right away, the doctors often start with chemotherapy that kills off as many cancer cells as possible. This presurgical treatment is called neoadjuvant therapy. It improves the chances that the surgeon will be successful in doing the surgery.
Surgery is done to remove the affected breast and the lymph nodes on the same side. Radiation therapy follows surgery to get at areas of breast cancer that the surgery could not get at or suspicious areas for cancer. Metastases can be treated with radiation and/or chemotherapy to remove what remains of the cancer. If the breast cancer is hormone positive, hormones are used to block the receptors on the tumor cells. Tamoxifen is one selective estrogen receptor modulator or SERM. It can be used in any woman with estrogen positive tumor cells. Aromatase inhibitors, including anastrosole and letroxole, block the enzymes that convert androgens to estrogen. They can only be used in postmenopausal women.
There is targeted therapy for certain types of inflammatory breast cancer. If the breast cancer is HER2 receptor positive, then Herceptin can be used to block the growth of the cancer.