How to Perform a Breast Self-Exam presented by City of Hope & The Pink Patch Project

hi I'm dr. Laura Cooper one of the breast surgeons at City of Hope today I'm going to talk to you about self breast examination we're on eight out of ten women detect breast cancers or breast lumps themselves therefore it's important that every woman understand the basics of a self breast examination there are actually two components look and feel for the first part of the exam looking you want to stand or sit in front of a mirror with your clothes off you want to look at both breasts to see if there are any differences between the

two examine the nipples to see if there's any difference between the two is one redder than the other is one pulling in and you want to put your hands on your hips and turn from side to side to see if there any changes while standing you actually want to put your arms forward on your hips because this will bring out lumps that might not appear otherwise it's important to raise both arms above the head this will draw up any puckering or dimpling for Masse's that might be underneath the nipple if you're standing like this and

you have a mass that's kind of in the lower part you might not see it at all but when you raise your arms what happens is that mass kind of stays and then the skin kind of pulls in as you're pulling up that was the first part of the examination for the second part you want to be lying down you want to put your head on a pillow to prop yourself up and place one arm behind your head then with your other hand you want to use your first three fingers when you use only one

finger or two fingers you can actually separate the breast tissue and think that you feel something that isn't there you can do this one of two ways you can either go in a circular motion all the way around the breast making sure that you overlap every area or you can go up down all the way across I prefer the circular motion from the collarbone to the sternum or mid chest below the breast and then all the way actually out into the underarm lymph nodes are underneath the underarm and sometimes those can become bigger when you're

doing the breast examination you're looking for things that feel different from the surrounding tissue what you're looking for is something that stands out something that feels like a pea or a marble or walnut you want to make sure that you do this examination same time each month remember the most important thing about a breast self-examination to know your breasts that way you can note any changes and alert your doctor [Music]