Is breast awareness different than breast self-examination (BSE)?
Breast awareness and breast self-examination (BSE) are both preventive health practices that encourage women to be aware of their breasts. Since 2001, however, research has talked about breast awareness rather than BSE.
Quite simply, being breast aware means knowing how your breasts normally look and feel, knowing what changes to look for, and discussing any unusual breast changes with a health care provider.
Breast awareness is promoted as a preventive health practice but not a way of screening for breast cancer. It acknowledges the limitations of BSE that research has identified and does not make claims about correct techniques or the frequency of self-examination or that it will save lives or reduce the breast cancer death rate.
In contrast, BSE prescribes certain standardized techniques for examining the breasts at the same time of each month. It is often promoted as a way of screening for breast cancer. However, there is insufficient or inconclusive scientific evidence of an effective BSE technique, or an effective way for health care providers to teach it to women, or that BSE reduces breast cancer death rates.
Given the limitations of BSE that research has found, the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation encourages women and men to practice being breast aware.
More Information:
Sources
Baxter, Nancy, with the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health. Preventive Health Care, 2001 Update: Should Women be Routinely Taught Breast Self-Examination to Screen for Breast Cancer? Canadian Medical Association Journal 2001; 164 (13): 1837-46.