Steps involved in a breast self exam
- Stand in front of a mirror with breasts exposed.
- Raise arms above your head. Look for dimpling, swelling, soreness, or redness in all parts of your breasts in the mirror.
- Repeat with hands placed on hips.
- Palpate your breasts with your fingers, feeling for lumps. Try to use a larger area of your fingers rather than prodding. Feel both for the area just beneath the skin and for the tissue deeper within. Go over the entire breast while examining. One method is to divide the breast into quadrants and palpate each quadrant carefully. Also examine the "axillary tail" of each breast that extends toward the axilla (armpit).
- Check the nipples and the area just beneath them. Gently squeeze each nipple to check for any discharge.
- Repeat palpation while lying down.
Contact your doctor if you have any of these breast cancer symptoms:
- Swelling, redness or soreness of your breast(s)
- Bulging, pucerking or dimpling of the skin on your breast(s)
- A nipple that has changed position
- A nipple that has become pushed inward instead of outward
- Watery, milky, bloody or a yellow fluid coming out of a nipple
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