Breast awareness guide
Breast awareness guide. Practical steps for women noticing a change and deciding what to do next.
For: Women noticing a change and deciding what to do next
General guidance across countries. Sources checked 2026-09-26.
Awareness rather than a monthly ritual
Breast awareness means knowing how your own breasts normally look and feel, so that a change registers as a change. Look and feel with a flat hand, at the same point in your cycle each month - just after a period, when breasts are least lumpy. You are not hunting for a cancer; you are learning your own normal.
What is worth acting on: a lump or thickening that is new and has not gone after one monthly cycle, a change in the size or shape of one breast, skin that dimples or looks like orange peel, a nipple that has newly turned inward or leaks fluid, or a sore on the nipple that does not heal.
What a scan does, and which one
A conversation cannot tell what a lump is and neither can an examination on its own. A scan can. An ultrasound is widely available, costs a fraction of a mammogram, and is generally the better first scan in a younger woman because her breast tissue is denser.
A mammogram, which is a breast X-ray, is the better scan from around forty, and it is available in the main cities rather than everywhere. Ask about it rather than travelling on the assumption that a hospital with an imaging department has the machine.
Sources
- Breast cancer · World Health Organization · CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO