UICC World Cancer Congress 2006

Objective:Every year 80,000 new cases of breast cancer are detected in Indian cities. According to Indian Council of Medical Research breast cancer claims 50,000 lives every year and the number of breast cancer cases is likely to double in the next 10 years. Fear of discovering the disease and social impediments keep many women away from organized screening programs that itself is rarely available. This is one of the major causes of late detection of the disease. The net result is that the success of treatment is below our expectation and below the world standard.

Methods:To counter these problems we have been organizing population based breast cancer screening programs for which we are using user-friendly Software ‘Can-Scan'. ‘Can-Scan' helps women to undertake breast self-examination (BSE) in private and after taking into account various parameters about their health helps to detect breast cancer at an early stage. It is also a powerful tool to create awareness about breast self-examination and breast cancer in general. We have observed that the number of women availing of the facility of breast cancer screening has gone up with the help of 'Can-Scan' software.

Results:We have screened 13000+ women out of which atleast we could detect 8% positive cases who could be treated and at present living a normal life since the detection was at an early stage. So in a developing country like India we feel BSE is the best method to detect breast cancer at an early stage.