Breast Cancer and Cancer

Nursing, Best Practices

The disorder selected from the Women's Health Initiative study is breast cancer. As inferred by Amonet al (2012), breast cancer continues to be the second leading cause of cancer mortality amongst women in the United States. Similar to all kinds of cancer, the anomalous tissue that constitutes breast cancer is the patient's individual cells that have multiplied beyond normative levels. In addition, these particular cells may also travel to different parts of the body in which they are usually not found. When these cells move throughout the body randomly, the cancer is deemed to have advanced. Statistics indicate that, in the year 2015, 230,000 women in the United States were diagnosed with breast cancer and out of this, 40,000 of them died. This indicates the importance of treating the disease across the world (Ziegler et al., 2016). The stages of breast cancer range from early breast cancer that can be cured to the metastatic or advanced stage, with an assortment of treatments for the disease. In particular, even if this illness is not common in the opposite gender, it ought to be taken seriously (Webmd, 2016). Usually, breast cancer starts with the formation of a small, restricted lump or tumour, or deposits of calcium and thereafter disseminating through channels within the breast to the lymph nodes and can spread out to other organs of the body through the blood stream.

The prevailing best practices for appraising and managing this disorder as pointed out in the research article by Amon et al. (2012), encompasses the concordant release of glycolysis proteins into the plasma prior to the diagnosis of estrogen receptor and breast cancer. Essentially, glycolysis is the primary phase of glucose digestion, which involves the conversion of glucose into pyruvate and creation of energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This path to the production of ATP instead of oxidative phosphorylation, fundamentally takes place where the cells lack oxygen. In particular, glycolysis plays a significant role in cancer as the tumour cells depend on it for the production of ATP even when oxygen is present (Amonet al, 2012). Initial discovery of breast cancer could prospectively be increased and improved through the development of biomarkers in blood in order to supplement mammography. Nevertheless, the detection of protein markers that display a substantial alteration in their plasma concentration at initial or premature phases of breast tumour growth has been difficult as a result of the extensive dynamic variety of protein profusion in plasma. An additional problem starts from the considerable protein disparities that take place in plasma not linked to tumour growth and may misperceive the exploration for markers (Amon et al., 2012).

In comparing the best practices presented in the WHI study to the current best practices presented in the article, the perceived element is the initial detection of biomarkers. In particular, this can have positive impact on women's health largely for the reason that the detection of bio-markers that are found in the blood are beneficial in earlier detection. This can have a significant impact on the decrease of breast cancer disease affliction by detecting cancers at an early period or stage when they can be substantially treated.