Breast cancer is THE MOST COMMON CANCER affecting women and one in eight women will develop the disease in their life time.
An estimated 50,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year in the UK, while in the US, more than 230,000 women were diagnosed in 2015 alone.
78% of women will now survive breast cancer for 10 years or more (2011-11 figures for England and Wales).
Treatment includes lumpectomy or mastectomy surgery with adjuvant therapy such as chemotherapy and/or radiation.
Around 40% of breast cancer patients will have a mastectomy. There were 23,200 mastectomies carried out in England in 2011/2012 (NHS). This figure is likely to grow as more women opt for preventive mastectomy following the identification of the BRCA genes.
40% of women suffer from depression post-mastectomy.