Breast Cancer: A Case Study

Breast cancer accounted for over 40,000 deaths in the United States in the year 2015. (Siegel, Miller & Jemal, 2015) Many of these deaths could have been prevented with early detection and treatment of the cancer with the use of mammograms. The use of routine mammograms was started in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Though this is the standard of care in todays healthcare, many people are not aware of the need for breast health screenings due to lack of education, economical status or ethnicity. By promoting breast health screenings and educating the populations we serve we can health reduce the number of breast cancer related deaths.

This poster urges the importance of getting examined early so the risk of breast cancer greatly diminishes.

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the US. About 40,000 women die from breast cancer each year, making it “the second leading cause of cancer death among women” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010) requires insurers to “provide coverage for and shall not impose any cost sharing requirements for” preventive services which are “in the current recommendation of the United States Preventive Services Task Force” (USPSTF). Nevertheless, the ACA makes an exception for breast cancer screening by stating that the USPSTF’s recommendation regarding mammogram “shall be considered the most current other than those issued in or around November 2009”. By using this legislative tool, the federal government mandates health insurers to provide coverage for annual or biennial mammograms in women aged 40 and older (US Preventive Services Task Force, 2013).

Cancer screening plays a vital role in detecting the disease early and preventing it from spreading. The purpose of screening is looking for cancer before a person has any symptoms. It is very important to enlighten populations at risk the significance of early cancer screening. People should have clear, understandable and correct knowledge of these tests which will help them to make informed decisions about their health care. The purpose of this paper is to observe the Every Woman Matters Program, reasons of its ineffectiveness in meeting its goals, review two evidence based cancer screening advocacy programs and the strategies to create more effective screening program as a nurse leader.

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States. Although, cancer is prevalent in every gender, each gender suffers from different types of cancers. Testicular cancer is only prevalent in men. Women on the other hand, suffer from uterine cancer as well as cervical cancer. Luckily, doctors have not only found the cause of both cancers, but also how to treat it. It is true that cancer can be prevented by checkups should be annual I believe that annual checkups can not only prevent cancer but help stop cancer from spreading.

Highlights from the 2016 National Comprehensive Cancer Network Conference (NCCN) indicated there was agreement on the efficacy of film mammography screening (Bevers, Bibbins-Domengo, & Oeffinger, 2016). However, The American Cancer Society (ACS) and the NCCN disagreed on two items: when to begin screening (40, 45, or 50 years of age) and frequency of screening, annual versus biennial (Bevers, Bibbins-Domengo, & Oeffinger, 2016). The NCCN recommends annual screening to begin at 40 years of age after counseling for risks and benefits. Regarding reliability and validity, the USPSTF formulated its’ current recommendations based on eight randomized controlled trails and over 200 observational trials. The NCCN argues that the studies used by the USPTF were done in the 1970s and 1980s using single view scans and older techniques. The NCCN further argued that when studying real world observations using current state-of-the art mammography equipment, and adjusting for confounders, the mortality reduction is closer the 35% in certain populations, as opposed to, the 18% mortality rate cited by the USPSTF (Bevers, Bibbins-Domengo, & Oeffinger, 2016). With regards to benefits, the NCCN argued that women screened are less likely to be diagnosed with advance stage breast cancer, and

In today’s society many women are not getting their mammograms done because they feel like they are not necessary or because they are scared of the results of the mammograms. Since women do not get their mammograms done they are more exposed to breast cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, women who get mammograms reduce about “15% to 20% in mortality from breast cancer” (“National Cancer Institute” 1). If women would get their mammograms the rate number increase and there will be less deaths in women.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer and it is the second leading cause of cancer death in American men according to the American Cancer Society(ACS) ( 2016). Older age is the strongest risk factor for the development of prostate cancer. Approximately 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime (ACS, 2016). There are more than 2.9 million prostate cancer survivors in the United States (ACS, 2016). The risk of dying from prostate cancer is 2.9 percent, with seventy percent of deaths occurring after age 75(ACS, 2016; Howlader, Krapcho, Neyman,Aminou et al, 2011). The use of the prostate-specific antigen testing transformed prostate cancer screening in the 1990’s (Up to date) . PSA screening for prostate

However, the recommendations for mammography screening have recently been challenged by the U.S. Preventative Service Task Force (U.S.P.S.T.F.). Since April of 2015 there has been a debate on what the breast cancer screening guidelines should be for women (United States House of Representatives, 2015). In 2015 the U.S.P.S.T.F. created confusion when they issued new guidelines which entailed that women should not begin mammogram screening until the age of 50 and even after 50 they recommend biannual screenings (United States House of Representatives, 2015). The problem with the U.S.P.S.T.F. changing their guidelines is that the insurance companies use the recommendations made by the U.S.P.S.T.F. and will only pay for guidelines with an A or B rating

In the Fall of 2011, Tina noticed that Elaine’s blouse was damp so she asked her sister what was wrong. Elaine tried to ignore it and changed the subject. But Tina was worried and took her to the emergency room where the E.R. doctor diagnosed her with Stage 4 breast cancer. Since Elaine rarely went to doctors or got any checkups, she suffered from a late detection of breast cancer due to her fear of doctors. While visiting my family in New York for winter vacation 2011, I noticed that Elaine’s weight was dropping and her clothes were not as secure as they once were. Elaine was having trouble performing simple tasks, such as walking. Seeing her like this put a lot of stress on her and my family. My family stressed and worried so long as we slowly witnessed her health deteriorate. The link to stress, The Stages of Breast Cancer, and the causes and ways to prevent Breast Cancer will be explained in this paper.

Women should receive more information about benefits and harm of screening to support informed decision making about breast cancer screening

Over 240,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2014 and it is estimated that 40,000 will not survive this terrible disease. Although these numbers seem daunting, believe it or not, breast cancer survival rates are actually on the incline. Many researchers and doctors believe this is due to the advances in treatment of cancers and in earlier detection which is the key in fighting almost any cancer; early detection. Women are taught to do monthly self-examinations to detect anything ‘out of the

Whether we diagnose with a disease or illness were uncontrollable and prostate cancer is one of them that does not have a treatment. However, there are ways we could found out whether we had prostate cancer or not by detecting through scanning. The early detection includes the Prostate- Specific Antigen (PSA) and Digital Recital Exam (DRE). Equally, early screening can help us to find out the abnormal size of the gland and easily to cure when we know the size. People who had prostate cancer can still live at a really high live span through early detection and taking care of the prostate cancer throughout the years. In addition, the Prostate-specific Antigen (PSA) is a scanning to see if the cells in the prostate gland and did the gland healthy or not. That size should be less than 4 nomograms per milliliters (ng/ml) in their blood to be consider healthy. However, there are a lot of reports about the Prostate-Specific Antigen is not effective and may cause harm due to the controversial surrounding of what it caused. According to a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), it states that “… because most prostate cancer will never cause harm, PSA screening considerably increases the risk of receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer, leading to treatment morbidity among men, with no possibility of benefit” (Hayes, 2014). Since most of the PSA treatment were not 1000 % accurate and sometimes it may lead to fake results. Therefore, the chance of causing more harms due to the results not reliable and the report shows not a significant heal rate in the PSA treatments. So, the benefits of early screening in PSA did not help men in later age who diagnosed with prostate

In 2011, my aunt Tami was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer. She had many surgeries, MRI’s, and CT scans. She also had countless rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. To help pay for the hospital bills that come along with severe cancer cases, my family hosted a benefit in Tami’s name, and started a GoFundMe page. Hundreds, if not thousands of dollars were raised to help Tami and her husband, Kim, pay for everything necessary for her survival.

While rate of detection of large tumors fell after the introduction of mammography as a screening technique, technique also resulted in increased detection of small tumors. Overdiagnosis of preliminary screening meant women were more likely to have breast cancer that was