It is now recommended that women start getting screened at age 40 without a family history.
SAN ANTONIO — October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The disease is the second leading cause of cancer death in women.
Breast cancer rates have dropped by close to 50% since the 1980s. A lot of that can be attributed to this month of awareness and bringing attention to screenings and early detection allowing women to conquer cancer.
“This is just a blip in my life. I was a lot younger and I wasn’t scared,” said Martha Gamez-Smith who found out she had breast cancer 14 years ago.
She beat that cancer but earlier this year she was diagnosed with another form of breast cancer.
“I was scared because I thought the first time was sort of a fluke. And this one was a completely different breast cancer,” said Gamez-Smith.
“A lot of breast cancer is actually spontaneous. There is no family history but there are certain risk factors that a woman should know about,” said Dr. Jessica Treviño Jones, associated professor, director of clinical genetics and director of the care clinic at the Mays Cancer Center at UT Health San Antonio.
Some of the common risk factors of breast cancer are age, inherited genes like BRCA1 and BRCA2, family history, dense breast tissues and having children at a later age.
The American Cancer Society says the risk of a woman developing breast cancer in their lifetime is about 13% or 1-in-8. About 316,000 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed this year alone and 42,000 women will die from the disease in 2025.
Dr. Trevino Jones says Gamez-Smith will not be one of those women. She says yearly screenings are a must starting at age 40, or earlier with a family history.
“It doesn’t take a lot of time,” said Gamez-Smith. “It is something that if you make it part of your self, you can impact others because you’re having that conversation every single year with your loved ones.”