What are the characteristics of breast cancer in young women?

  Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in women, and the most common age of breast cancer is 45-60 years old, while breast cancer in young people under 35 years old is less common, accounting for about 6.5% of all breast cancers, and the incidence of breast cancer in young people has been increasing year by year in recent years. Because of the lack of typical symptoms of young breast cancer, it is easy to be overlooked and more dangerous, so it should be highly valued by young women and clinicians.  Young breast cancer has the following characteristics: 1. Young breast cancer patients are mostly in the reproductive stage, with vigorous ovarian function and high estrogen and progesterone levels, which can promote hematological or lymphatic metastasis of breast cancer; when combined with pregnancy and lactation, their breasts are plump and dense, so it is not easy to detect the lesions early in clinical and adjuvant examinations, and the tumor can be easily concealed and delayed.  Young women and clinicians lack vigilance to young breast cancer and often misdiagnose it as breast fibroadenoma or breast hyperplasia, etc. The average time from the appearance of symptoms to the first consultation is about 2 years, which delays the best treatment time.  3. Lack of effective diagnostic tools for young breast cancer. Due to the physiological characteristics of young women’s breast, it is difficult to distinguish abnormal density lesions on mammogram; B-ultrasound examination can detect abnormal density lesions, but it is difficult to determine benign or malignant; although breast magnetic resonance examination has high sensitivity and specificity, it is expensive and difficult to promote its application. Only puncture cytology examination is of greater diagnostic significance.  4. Invasive ductal carcinoma is the most common form of breast cancer in young people, with poor differentiation, high malignancy and strong invasiveness; high rate of axillary lymph node metastasis; high rate of estrogen receptor negativity and poor sensitivity to endocrine therapy, so young breast cancer lesions progress quickly and have poor prognosis.