Approaches to Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, accounting for about one-third of cancer cases in women and approximately 14% of cancer-related death in females in the worldwide. It is of great importance to detect breast cancer in the early stage and avoiding overtreatment in patients who only receive a modest benefit, while suffering from toxic side effects, so aiming early detection, diagnostic strategies are important. Biomarkers that are found in blood, urine or body tissues are mostly useful in evaluating the progression of the disease status after initial chemotherapy and radiotherapy to monitor subsequent treatment strategies. In this review, we discuss the importance of established prognostic factors and predictive biomarkers as well as some emerging biomarkers that are currently undergoing testing for technical validity and clinical utility.