What Do I Understand By Risk Factors In Breast Cancer?When a person’s particular characteristic or behaviour is associated with an increased risk for a given disease, the characteristic is labeled a “Risk factor”. Eg. Smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer and heart disease. Some risk factors will influence one’s susceptibility to a particular disease more than others. This is differentiated by relative risk by comparing likelihood of the disease in people with the risk factor compared to people without the risk factor. A relative risk more than 1.0 signifies greater risk while that which is less than 1.0 signifies lower risk. Relative risk cannot precisely calculate an individual’s risk. If a woman adds a lifetime risk to relative risk, then she will overestimate her risk and if she adds several relative risks together, this will also overestimate her risk. The purpose is to know your personal risk factor profile and understand what it means so that it will help you and your doctor plan a course of action that may reduce your chance of ever getting the disease or at least to detect it in its earliest, most treatable stages. The risk of breast cancer increases after age 40. Women younger than 40 are at relatively low risk of breast cancer. However, these figures in Table 1 specifically apply to American women but serves as an example in this discussion on understanding risk. If a member of your immediate family, such as your mother or a sister, had breast cancer before menopause, you are at higher risk. To protect yourself, you may want to perform self-breast examination and other screening (mammography) on a more regular basis before the age of 40. While these statistics may provide a general sense of a woman’s risk at a given age, they cannot be construed to accurately determine a particular woman’s risk, as other variables such as dietary habits, level of activity and family history modify the risk.
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