How common is breast cancer?

 

Breast cancer in women is common  in all industrialized countries of the  world, at around 30.5 percent. Since the 1980s, the number of cases has doubled: about 69,000 times a year, doctors currently diagnose “breast cancer” in a woman, and over 17,850 women die from it every year. Furthermore, 6,500 in-situ carcinomas (preliminary stages of breast cancer) occur every year.

What is Diabetes and How Can You Prevent it?

Men can also develop breast cancer, but very rarely: for around 69,220 newly diagnosed women in 2014, there were 650 men with breast cancer. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Even though it is the most common, breast cancer is usually not the most dangerous cancer. Detected and treated in good time, most diseases are curable

The number of deaths has been falling for a number of years, despite the rising rate of new cases. Breast cancer can now be treated more successfully than before - with more targeted and often less stressful methods. More and more women who develop breast cancer do not die from it. Five years after  diagnosis  , approximately 81.6 percent of patients are still alive. The cure rate has increased in the last 10 years due to improved early detection, new therapy concepts (surgical, radiation therapy and medication) and the interdisciplinary care in the certified centers. 

Currently, one in eight women will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives. The risk increases with age. Younger women are rarely affected, only from the age of 40 and especially from the age of 50 does the risk increase, only to decrease again from the age of around 70. The mean age of onset for breast cancer is around 64 years, a few years below the average for all cancers, with every fourth person affected being younger than 55 years and every tenth being younger than 45 years old.