Conference with the Cancer Survivor Dialogue Group

On October 9, 2012, the CRBCM had a chance to submit a comprehensive mission and plan of activities intended for implementation annually.  The plan was presented before the Dialogue Cancer Group, the largest Breast cancer survivors group in El Paso. Some members including a local physician were current patients undergoing chemotherapy.  We took that opportunity to conduct a small survey to detect perception by El Pasoans as to what would be the most frequent or predominant risk factors for Breast cancer.  Certainly, this was to tailor our education program for a potential primary prevention intervention. We asked  the participants to rank the first 10 risk factors by importance out of 28 risk factors documented by BreastCancer.org on their web page. The list was randomly proposed for this small study.  We have not concluded our analysis yet, but one can already suggest that 85% of survivors and current patients in El Paso feel that the 2 predominant Risk factors at equal rates were FAMILY HISTORY and GENETIC PREDISPOSITION.
This finding is striking because of the following reasons:
1.  The group under observation is made of people who discuss monthly about Breast Cancer.  Current patients speak with their Doctors almost everyday.  This is a group of people that is clearly very well informed about this topic. But they still believe that the disease is either hereditary or follows a Mendelian inheritance pattern. That somehow the family history determines who will get Breast Cancer. Te truth is that 85 percent of newly diagnosed Breast cancers happen in women who are the first in their family to have the disease. In other words, just because there is no family history of breast cancer, women should not feel protected against the disease. 

Take your mammogram if you are over 40 years of age: Please!

2. The consequence of the belief that "nobody in my family has it, so I am not at risk and so why would I want to go for a mammogram?"  clearly is one of the barriers to taking a screening mammogram.  Our Health Education material will feature it as a major objective to discuss in order to increase local rates of screening mammograms here in El Paso.
3. The Other truth is that most research literature suggests that only 5 to 10% of breast cancers (including BRCA 1 and BRCA 2) have a true genetic or familial hereditary or Mendelian inheritance pattern.  The rest is random!

                 TO BE CONTINUED