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If you’ve ever had an abnormal lump in your breast, or have had a family history of breast cancer, you know the fear of wondering if that lump is cancerous and how fast it is growing. It is important to know that not all breast cancers grow in the same way. Breast cancer can develop at different rates, experts tell Bustle, and many factors affect how quickly or how slowly the process is.
Breast cancers occur when cells begin to divide without stopping, Dr. Debra Patt MD, an oncologist, breast cancer specialist and executive vice president of Texas Oncology, tells Bustle. “Imagine you have a population of rabbits that is doubling every month,” says Dr. Patt. “In month one you have two rabbits, then four, then eight. It’s a very different population in month three (eight rabbits) and month seven (128 rabbits).”
A cancer cell must divide about 30 times before it can feel like a tumor, about half an inch in diameter, according to the Robert W. Franz Cancer Research Center at Providence Portland Medical Center. But there is no uniform timeline for the growth of breast cancer.
“Breast cancer can be slow-growing, aggressive, or intermediate-growing,” Dr. Deborah M. Axelrod MD, a breast surgeon and professor at NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, tells Bustle. On average, says Dr. Axelrod, the time it takes for a tumor to double in size is 50 to 150 days. “Fortunately, most breast cancers are not aggressive and kind of grow in the middle of the road,” she says. A cell division can take up to a month or two, which means that a breast cancer tumor, even a small one, may have been quietly forming for two to five years.
If you are diagnosed with breast cancer, your disease will be assigned a grade and stage. Its stage, one to four, indicates how much it has progressed and whether it has spread to other parts of your body. His rating, from one to three, is how fast he is growing, with three being the fastest.
“You may know that certain types of breast cancer grow faster than others, such as triple negative cancers and HER2 positive cancers,” Dr. Janet Yeh MD, a breast surgeon at NYU Langone Hospital – Brooklyn, tells Bustle. Some types are slower: For example, tubular breast cancer, a cancer of the tissue ducts of the breasts that tends to be tube-shaped, usually takes a relatively long time to develop.
A 2018 study published in Breast cancer observed how breast tumors grew between diagnosis and surgery, and found that 64% grew over the course of about 57 days. On average, those tumors grew about 35%. Triple negative breast cancers, according to this study, were the most likely to grow rapidly. And a 2020 study published in Mom showed that the younger the cancer patients were, the more likely they were to have fast-growing breast cancers.
In some people, the growth of breast cancer can be very slow. “A one centimeter cancer can take 10 years to grow,” says Dr. Axelrod. In others, it is fast. And it’s very difficult to pin down how aggressive your cancer might be, even if family members have had fast-growing breast cancer before. “Having a family history of breast cancer or even a pathogenic gene mutation like BRCA does not mean that you are more likely to have aggressive cancer,” says Dr. Yeh. “It just means that you have a higher risk of breast cancer overall.” Many factors are involved in how breast cancers form and develop, including environment and age.
“It is important to understand that we do not yet know why some people who do not have risk factors develop cancer, but other people who are at high risk do not. It is an unpredictable disease, which is precisely why people should not wait “. “Says Dr. Patt.
A lump in your breast that appears to be growing rapidly may not be malignant; some benign lumps can also enlarge quickly. Either way, if you notice a lump that wasn’t there before, it’s a good idea to see your doctor as soon as possible to get it checked out.
Experts:
Dr. Deborah M. Axelrod MD
Dr. Debra Patt MD
Dr. Janet Yeh MD
Cited studies:
Förnvik, D., Lång, K., Andersson, I., Dustler, M., Borgquist, S. and Timberg, P. (2016). ESTIMATES OF THE GROWTH RATE OF BREAST CANCER OF THE MAMMOGRAMS AND ITS RELATION TO THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TUMOR. Radiation protection dosimetry, 169(1-4), 151-157. https://doi.org/10.1093/rpd/ncv417
MacInnes, EG, Duffy, SW, Simpson, JA, Wallis, MG, Turnbull, AE, Wilkinson, LS, Satchithananda, K., Rahim, R., Dodwell, D., Hogan, BV, Blyuss, O. and Sharma, N. (2020). Radiological audit of interval breast cancers: estimation of tumor growth rates. Mama (Edinburgh, Scotland), 51, 114-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.breast.2020.03.006
Nakashima, K., Uematsu, T., Takahashi, K., Nishimura, S., Tadokoro, Y., Hayashi, T. and Sugino, T. (2019). Does the breast cancer growth rate really depend on the tumor subtype? Measurement of tumor doubling time by serial ultrasound between diagnosis and surgery. Breast cancer (Tokyo, Japan), 26(2), 206–214. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12282-018-0914-0
