Lower inner quadrant breast cancer

Hello MissP6

Welcome to the online community. I’m Gina and I am one of the Macmillan cancer information nurse specialists on the Macmillan support line.

Thank you for reaching out to us to discuss your concerns. It can be a very worrying time for people waiting for results and tests. I see you have joined the breast cancer forum which is a really helpful group for support.

In response to your question, yes lumps in the lower inner quadrant are not as common as other sites of breast cancer. The link you have given is to a study closed in 2002 and reported in 2005 suggesting that the location of the tumour in the breast may affect prognosis. However, this could be for a number of reasons, one being the position (in the lower inner quadrant) can make it much more difficult to detect tumours earlier. Often tumours in this area may be larger or more advanced than if found in other areas of the breast tissue. In the last 20 years there have been significant changes to diagnosis and treatments of breast cancer. These improvements may alter the significance and conclusions of that report. When looking at studies it is important that they have been conducted in the last 5-10 years.

Whilst I appreciate you are worried about the location, there are a number of other factors that can affect your prognosis. Some of these are tumour type, tumour size, grading, hormone receptor status (ER/PR), number of lymph nodes involved, and breast cancer now goes into further detail.

It is also important to know that from the research the efficacy of treatment doesn’t seem to be affected by the tumour location.

Routine diagnosis and staging for breast cancer does not usually include MRI or CT scans, unless there is a suspicion that the axillary nodes are involved, or if the biopsy shows a specific type of breast cancer. If you are concerned we would always recommend that you discuss this with your treatment team.

You mentioned you are concerned about radiotherapy to your heart, as it would be on your left side, here is further information about radiotherapy to the breast which discusses some of the ways to reduce the risks to the heart that are used during treatment. Again, it would be worth looking at these and discussing with your treatment team about your concerns and what precautions they will take.

Diagnosis is often a very difficult time for people, and to have things that you cant control is very overwhelming and frightening. What might be helpful if you can try and concentrate on what you can do to try and improve your overall health and lifestyle as much as you can. This might not need any or much improvement, but sometimes the acknowledgement that you can’t control a lot of what is happening, but to focus on what you can control can be helpful.

As we don’t have access to your hospital records etc, so we would suggest that you speak to your treatment team about your concerns as they will be able to advise you and if they need to take any further precautions or tests/monitoring etc for you in the future to hopefully reduce some of your worries. We also have some helpful information on questions to ask your healthcare team.

I also wonder if you might benefit from giving our support line a call. We often find we can explain our answers in a bit more detail over the phone, giving you the opportunity to ask more detail and giving you the opportunity to ask more questions if needed. It can be very overwhelming not knowing how things might affect you moving forward. Although we can’t tell you exactly what to expect, we can help explain what usually happens for most people in a similar situation.

I hope this information is useful. Please don’t hesitate to get back in contact by email, webchat or phone, if you need further information or support.  

The Macmillan Support Line offers practical, clinical, financial and emotional support. You can call us free from landlines and from most mobile phone networks* on 0808 808 00 00, 7 days a week, 8am – 8pm.  

Best wishes,

Gina

Cancer Information Nurse Specialist

Ref/GMcR/AP

Dear Gina,

Thank you so much, for taking the time to send me such a detailed and helpful reply., there was so much useful information in there.

I hadn't heard of Breast Cancer Now, I've been looking at that this afternoon.so I feel better prepared for tomorrow.

I am feeling frightened and overwhelmed so I'll try to focus on what I can control as you've suggested, as I do need to make some changes to my lifestyle and diet, so that will help me. 

Thank you again, Gina, wishing you a good evening :)