Breast cancer is the disease that many women fear most, though they're more likely to die of cardiovascular disease, which kills more women than do all forms of cancer combined. Still, breast cancer is second only to lung cancer as a cause of cancer deaths in American women. Breast cancer can also occur in men, although it rarely does. Experts predict 178,000 women and 2,000 men will develop breast cancer in the United States in 2007.
Yet there's more reason for optimism than ever before. In the last 30 years, doctors have made great strides in early diagnosis and treatment of the disease and in reducing breast cancer deaths. In 1975, a diagnosis of breast cancer usually meant radical mastectomy — removal of the entire breast along with underarm lymph nodes and muscles underneath the breast. Today, radical mastectomy is rarely performed. Instead, there are more and better treatment options, and many women are candidates for breast-sparing operations.