???Inflammatory breast cancer can develop very quickly and can often be mistaken as an insect bite or infection or inflammation in the breast,??? says Valerie Gorman, breast surgeon on the medical staff at Baylor Medical Center at Waxahachie. ???IBC is very similar to mastitis, a common breast infection, so it is easily mistaken as this. But if antibiotics do not clear up the infection within a week, a biopsy should be performed to rule out breast cancer.???

Not only are the symptoms of IBC difficult for patients and sometimes even doctors to recognize, but it's usually not detected primarily by mammograms alone. Why? Unlike most types of breast cancer, IBC does not present as a lump.

According to the National Cancer Institute, symptoms usually develop quickly??”over a period of weeks or months. Typical symptoms of IBC include:

Redness, swelling or warmth in the breast A pink, reddish purple or bruised appearance on the skin of the breast Ridges that develop on the skin of the breast Heaviness, tenderness or an aching or burning sensation in the breast  A sudden increase in breast size Swollen lymph nodes under the arm or above the collarbone

Nearly all women diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) all say the same thing??”they never thought the changes in their breast could be breast cancer,??? says Dr. Gorman. ???Early diagnosis is critical because IBC is aggressive and can spread to other parts of the body very quickly."

Around four-percent of the cancers diagnosed each year are IBC, but it's more common in women under 50 and in African-Americans.

If you suspect that you may have inflammatory breast cancer consult with your physician.

BaylorHealth

There were also lower rates of nausea among those treated with taxanes and the review found that some regimens of these drugs were less likely to be harmful to the heart.

The studies showed that replacing another kind of drug called an anthracycline with a taxane could reduce the risk of heart damage. ???This will also help physicians to choose a safer regimen in women who may be at higher risk of this complication,??? Nowak said.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, affecting more than 1 million worldwide each year and killing some 400,000 annually. One in eight American women will receive a breast cancer diagnosis over the course of a lifetime. Thirty percent of those diagnosed will die from it.

Dickersin said that while research reviews often serve as guidance tools for doctors in clinical practice, they should also help researchers identify unanswered questions. ???It is still unclear which women gain the most benefit from the inclusion of taxanes,??? Nowak said.

Also unknown is whether taxanes are more beneficial to women whose tumors grow in response to the hormone estrogen or to those whose tumors are not hormone-sensitive, and whether these drugs are more or less effective in women with certain genetic predispositions to the disease.

Nowak and one of the other four review authors report that drug companies that manufacture taxanes have previously paid them for some travel expenses and lectures. Dickersin ??” who is director of the U.S. Cochrane Center, one of 12 such centers around the world ??” said that Cochrane rules on allowable potential conflicts of interest are much stricter than other guidelines, including those of many medical journals and organizations.

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