Eighty percent of the patients who visit the clinic seek medical attention because they inadvertently find lumps and other problems in their breasts while bathing or changing clothes.
Self-examination refers to the regular or irregular self-examination of the breast by women themselves. Self-examination can detect abnormalities in the breast in time to seek medical consultation, which can lead to the detection of some breast diseases, especially early detection of breast cancer.
For breast cancer with palpable masses, early detection can be achieved through regular self-examination. Without regular self-examination, most of the breast cancer patients are already in stage II or III when they are diagnosed with symptoms, and some of them have already lost the hope of curative treatment by the time they are diagnosed. If stage I breast cancer is detected early, the five-year survival rate after surgery can be over 90%.
It is important for women to learn how to do self-examination of breast, so that breast diseases can be detected and treated as early as possible.
How to do self-examination of the breast?
A. Self-examination of the breast position
1, check the breast in the shower: when you take a shower, the skin surface is moist, and the skin is smooth after soap is rubbed, which is good for finding abnormalities, so check (touch) the left breast with your right hand and pay attention to any local thickening or lumps.
2, in front of the mirror to check the breast, check to choose a bright light place, remove the blouse and bra, fully exposed both sides of the breast, facing the mirror. Check the two upper limbs up, pay attention to whether there is a local bulge, depression and nipple changes in the breast, then cross your arms, forcefully support in the waist and hip, so that the chest muscle tension after checking whether there are changes in the breast, check, pay special attention to whether the two sides of the breast symmetry, for asymmetric changes, should pay great attention.
3, lying on the bed when lying flat to check the breast: lying down flat, if the right side of the breast is checked in the right shoulder back pad a small thin pillow, the right hand pillow under the head so that the breast tissue is more evenly exposed, easy to check. When examining the left breast, use the four fingers of the right hand to lean together, put them flat, gently touch the breast, and check the fingers in a certain direction, in sequence, doing circular movements.
II. Time of examination
Before the examination, you need to pay attention to the selection of a date, preferably in the middle of the two menstrual periods. Because at this time the breast is less congested, soft, easier to feel the lump.
Three, self-examination of the breast finger
The correct inspection technique is to gently touch the breast with joined fingers, not to grasp and pinch, otherwise it is easy to mistake normal breast tissue for a lump. When touching the palm of the hand should be flat, four fingers together, with the most sensitive index finger, middle finger, ring finger end of the finger in order to gently search the breast.
Fourth, the contents of breast visual examination.
First of all, we should see whether our two breasts are symmetrical, whether there is any change in the color of the skin, whether there is nipple invagination or overflow.
1, the shape of the breast: remove the top, face the mirror, arms crossed or raised over the head, anti several times, observe whether the outline of the breast shape is complete symmetry, there is no abnormality in the outline. Normal breasts have a complete curved contour, and any abnormal changes in this curved shape should be taken seriously.
2, the skin of the breast: observe whether the skin of the breast is smooth, whether the color is normal, whether the skin has dilated veins and edema, whether the skin has dotted depressions (or orange peel-like changes) and regional depressions (dimple sign) exist.
3. Nipples: check whether the height of both nipples is on a horizontal line, whether the color of both nipples and areolas is the same, whether the skin of the nipples is peeling or erosion, and whether the nipples are elevated or have retraction.
4. Chest wall: whether there are large dark brown disease-like protrusions on the chest wall from the outer top of the nipple to the inner bottom of the nipple, to be considered as possible parametrium or paramecium.
Five, the order of self-examination touching the breast
From the outer upper, outer lower, inner lower, inner upper area of the breast, and finally the nipple and areola area in the middle of the breast, as the outer upper part of the breast can extend to the armpit, the angular protrusion of the breast should not be ignored during the examination. Small lumps are not easily palpable, so the left hand can be used to hold the breast and the right hand can be used to look for them during the examination. The lower part of the lump is often covered by the sagging breast, so the breast can be held up or the arm can be raised lying down, and the other hand can be used to look for the deep lump. Finally, squeeze the nipple, pay attention to whether there is liquid outflow, and then check both sides of the armpit in the same way, pay attention to the presence of enlarged lymph nodes, so that the self-examination of the breast is completed.
Touching is to find out if there are lumps in the breast. If you find any abnormalities during the process of touching, you should go to the hospital in time.