Why are More Women Getting Breast Cancer in the United States?

QUESTION: In 1964, the breast cancer rate for women in the United States was that one in 20 women would get breast cancer in her lifetime. It is now one in seven. What is the cause or causes of this increase?

ANSWER: The increase in incidence of breast cancer that occurred between the 1960s and 1990s was due primarily to two phenomena:

1. The risk of breast cancer increases with age, and women are living longer.
2. We are trying harder to find breast cancer, with more aggressive attempts to build awareness about the need for mammography, and the tests we use to find breast cancer are much better at finding smaller cancers that might have been missed by older techniques.

In the last few years within the United States, thank goodness, the incidence is finally declining. But as long as there is at least one woman whose life is held hostage or taken by this disease, we will continue to do whatever we can at breastcancer.org to lessen its scourge.

—Marisa Weiss, M.D.