Breast cancer. Part 3: advanced cancer and psychological implications

This is the last article in this 3-part series on breast cancer. The previous two articles have outlined the principles behind breast awareness and breast health, detailing common benign breast diseases, types of breast cancer and staging, and treatment for breast cancer, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and endocrine treatment. The series concludes by giving information on advanced disease, including when a patient presents late with a fungating breast lesion, or if the disease has metastasized from the breast to other organs. Lymphoedema is also described and discussed, and the latter half of this article discusses psychological implications of breast cancer, from diagnosis through the individual treatments.