Breast cancer symptoms can vary, and some may not be immediately apparent – one less well-known sign to watch out for involves checking the skin on and around your breasts
Breast cancer touches the lives of around 55,000 women and 400 men across the UK annually – but an alarming number remain unaware of the full range of symptoms to watch out for.
And some aren’t as obvious as you might think. It’s common knowledge that feeling for lumps is crucial in breast checks, yet there’s another symptom, often overlooked, that could be a lifesaver, and it appears on the skin.
Breast Cancer Now has a worrying statistic that in about five per cent of cases, women’s breast cancer will have ‘already spread and become incurable’ by the time it’s caught, highlighting just how critical early detection is.
Both women and men should be aware of a lesser-known breast cancer symptom, which is all too easy to miss if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Health professionals from Roche, leaders in biotech diagnostics, are spreading awareness: “Dimpling of the skin could suggest that the tiny channels in the breast, called lymph vessels, which help get rid of waste products from the body, have become blocked.
“This causes the breast to become inflamed and swollen and a large area of skin to develop little dimples, like orange peel. In some cases, this is a sign of a type of breast cancer known as inflammatory breast cancer.”
According to Cancer Research UK, inflammatory breast cancer is a rare form of the disease, accounting for less than five per cent of cases. It tends to progress more quickly than other, more frequently diagnosed types.
Inflammatory breast cancer often involves cells blocking small lymph vessels in the breast, causing the skin to become ‘red and inflamed’. The condition known as orange peel skin, or peau d’orange, can also be indicative of other issues such as mastitis – a common breast infection among pregnant or breastfeeding women – or fat necrosis, where fat tissue dies due to injury and loss of blood supply.
If you need someone to talk to or require support, you can call Macmillan free on 0808 808 00 00.