Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the commonest female malignancy globally. In Nigeria breast cancer has overtaken cervical cancer as the leading female malignancy. It is also the commonest cancer among women in South Africa. Breast cancer cases have increased in hitherto low incidence areas of Asia and Africa due to “Westernized lifestyle” and better reporting of the disease. In Nigeria as in most developing countries, late presentation with unfavorable prognosis is common. The African patient is likely to present with a more aggressive tumor than her Western counterpart and is likely to die from the disease . Several works have shown that basal-like tumors occur significantly higher among pre-menopausal African-American and African women. Ikpatt et al. found that tumors of Nigerian women had less tubular differentiation and higher mitotic to apoptotic index compared to Finnish women. However these views are by no means universally accepted as recent works by several authors have shown that there was no difference in the pattern of hormone receptors in breast cancer patients of African origin compared to other populations. They are of the view that the poor prognostic features of tumors of African origin are only a reflection of the late stage at diagnosis, non-availability of screening methods and the adverse influence of lack of awareness of the disease and some other epidemiological risk factors. Clinical Presentation, Prevalence and Management of Breast Cancer in Sokoto, Nigeria Agbo PS et al.

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Last date updated on April, 2024