Early detection of Cancer - Examine larynx sigmoid colon lungs breast uterine cervix

Your regular medical checkup is another important means for early detection of cancer. Your doctor will examine larynx, rectum and sigmoid colon, and usually your lungs. For women, additional preventive measures are important. 

Early breast and uterine cancers is readily curable. Therefore, women should arrange with their doctors to have regular Pap smears of the uterine cervix. This is a simple, painless test which requires only a few minutes and involves only taking a smear through the vagina so cells can be examined under the microscope. 

It should be done regularly, as often as your physician, or the gynecologist to whom he refers you, may suggest. Regarding the breasts, we feel that most women should learn to examine them once each month. If that makes unduly nervous, then they should set up a schedule of regular examinations by the doctor.

Self-examination is a simple process. Immediately after the menstrual period when the breasts are normally soft, look into a mirror and raise both arms over your head so that the sides of the breasts are visible. Study your breasts carefully, noting whether one looks higher than the other or whether one seems larger than it was the previous month. Also, check for any slight depressions or dimpling of the skin over the breast. 

Next, using the right hands on the left breast and vice versa, push the breast back gently against your chest and feel for any small lumps. Then, feel the armpits for any swelling. The best time to make this examination is in the morning. If you decide that something may be wrong, you have all day to reach your doctor, if only to get his reassurance. Not every lump in the breast means cancer. Many lumps are harmless formations due to glandular functioning. Let your doctor decide what they are.

Fortunately, he can now use a special type of x-ray study for breast cancer, a technique called mammography. If cancer should be diagnosed, your doctor will suggest whether surgery or radiation is the best therapy. Most surgeons do cancer surgery. Only a few surgeons restrict themselves to cancer work alone. In our largest cities there are hospitals that specialize in treating cancer patients. 

Let your doctor advice you. Surgery for removal of the cancerous area may be followed by a course of x-ray or other radiation to try to kill any cancer cells that might be lying beyond the area the surgeon has excised.