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What Is Inflammatory Breast Cancer?
What is inflammatory breast cancer?
Learn about the breast cancer rash associated with inflammatory breast cancer symptoms and what your options may be.
Inflammatory breast cancer is actually quite rare. The problem is that is is very aggressive, locally advanced, and symptoms often are diagnosed as mastitis before a biopsy for cancer is made.
One major difference you can ask your doctor to measure is if you have a temperature or not. With mastitis, there is a high fever. With IBC, there will not be an increase in body temperature.
In IBC, the cancer cells actually block the lymph vessels in the breast.
It is difficult to diagnose with a mammogram due to the way the cancer cells lay (think like sheets of paper instead of a lump).
Inflammatory breast cancer is highly resistant to standard chemotherapy drugs, which also contributes to the lower survival rate.
Inflammatory Breast Cancer Symptoms
The main symptoms are swelling and redness of the breast, with a feeling similar to a mastitis infection.
There is usually not a breast cancer lump with inflammatory breast cancer.
Unlike other types of breast cancer, inflammatory breast cancer symptoms show up very quickly.
This can happen within weeks, days or even overnight.
The symptoms of IBC are often mistaken, as stated above, as an infection.
Sometimes it is only after treatment with antibiotics that do not work that a biopsy may be ordered. By then, it might be too late. This type of cancer has a 5 year 40-50% survival rate.
Other symptoms include:
Redness of the breast or a breast cancer rash
Breast pain
Breast skin resembles an orange (dimpled and puckered)
A shooting or stabbing pain
Enlarged lymph nodes under the arm
Itching that cannot be relieved with creams
The breast feels very warm to the touch
The key for treatment of inflammatory breast cancer is prompt, intensive treatment. This cancer is a swift and deadly killer.
