Is breast cancer fatal?
Breast cancer, like any cancer, can be fatal. The chances of breast cancer being fatal or the chances of it being cured come down to when it is diagnosed. The earlier a cancer is diagnosed, or the earlier breast cancer is diagnosed, the greater the chances are that it's going to be cured. Therefore it's really important to do the appropriate mammographic screening and breast exams to catch breast cancer early when it's curable. Breast cancer presents at a more advanced stage if it's metastatic. Usually at that point it is not curable. If breast cancer relapses in just one organ, one site in the liver, or in the lung, potentially it can be resected similarly to colorectal cancer. It can potentially be cured, but for the majority of women once breast cancer relapses or if it presents in a metastatic setting, it's not curable. All the treatments we have at that point are to help women live longer and to live longer feeling better, and to try to turn breast cancer into a chronic disease, but we know that at some point the breast cancer will grow through the treatment and that women will die of the breast cancer or a complication of it. So, that's why it is so important to catch breast cancer early before it becomes more advanced, before it's metastatic.
