BREAST SELF-EXAMINATION

BY :
DESI WILDAYANI

Breast Health Begins With You

What you need to know about breast

What do we know about causes?

Nobody knows for certain why some women develop
breast cancer and others do not. What is known is:
You have not done anything "wrong" in your life that
caused breast cancer.
You CANNOT "catch" breast cancer.
It is NOT caused by stress or by injury to the breast.
Most women DO NOT have any known risk factors or
a history of the disease in their families.
Getting older DOES increase your risk of getting
breast cancer, starting at the age of 40 and continuing
into your 80s.

Factors that increase risk

Lifestyle

Family History

Personal History

Why Do a Breast Self Exam?

There are two

basic steps to
conducting a
Breast Self Exam
(BSE): first you
look at your
breasts, and then
you touch them.

Visual Examination

During the first part of the BSE, the

visual examination, you are looking for
changes in each breast. So if your
breasts have always been mushy,
that's not a concern unless this is a
new change.

1.
2.
3.

Stand in front of a mirror and

look for the above changes in
your breasts (from both a
frontal and profile view) in 3
different positions:
With your arms up behind
your head
With your arms down at your
sides
Bending forward

The changes you are looking for

include:

Size
Shape
Bumps/lumps NOTE: normal lumpiness,
like in the week before and of your
menstrual cycle, will appear as very small
and separate lumps like the texture of an
orange.
Contour or symmetry (is there a difference
in the level between your nipples? Do both
breasts look symmetrical?)

Other Changes to Look For

Sores or scaly
skin

Skin discoloration
or dimpling

Discharge or
puckering of the
nipple

Tactile Examination
Begin by looking for the changes
while standing up. Some women
find it useful to do this part of the
BSE in the shower, since soap or
bath gel will aid in the ease of
feeling your breasts.

For the BSE, you need to pick a

pattern to feel your breasts and
surrounding areas, which
include:

the breast itself

between the breast and underarm
the underarm itself
the area above the breast up to the
collarbone and across to your shoulder

It is important to check
surrounding areas because breast
cancer may be found in the lymph
node tissue around your breast
and underarm.

You use the pads

(where your
fingerprints are)
of your three
middle fingers on
your right hand
pressed together
flat to check your
left breast, and
do the opposite
for the right
breast.

Patterns

Spiral (concentric circles): begin with a

large circle around the perimeter of
your breast and make smaller and
smaller circles as you work your way
toward the nipple.

Pie shape wedges: pretend your

breast is divided into sections like
pieces of a pie, begin in the nipple area
and feel your breast in a small circular
motion within one pie shape section,
then move on to the next wedge
starting in the nipple area again.

Up and down: pretend

your breast is divided into
vertical stripes, begin on
one side and feel your
breast in a small circular
motion up and down in a
zig zag pattern.

When using any of the 3 patterns,

you should always be using a
circular rubbing motion (in dimesized circles) without lifting up
your fingers.

Once you've performed the tactile

examination while standing up in
front of a mirror, you should do
the whole examination again, this
time while lying down.