SAN ANTONIO – The largest breast cancer research conference in the world is happening this week in San Antonio.
This week, the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center is where leading doctors from all over have gathered to share research and ideas in the fight against breast cancer.
The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, hosted by the Mays Cancer Center, started in San Antonio 47 years ago with fewer than 100 attendees.
Now, the event brings in $15 million to the city and thousands of doctors to the Alamo City.
The symposium has 11,000 doctors, researchers and patient advocates from more than 102 countries, sharing the latest and best research in breast cancer.
“Some of the big announcements that we’ve been able to see are some data from different medications that have been shown to prolong a woman’s life,” Dr. Jessica Treviño Jones, a breast cancer medical oncologist at Mays Cancer Center and associate professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at UT Health San Antonio said. “So, even if we cannot cure a woman’s breast cancer, she will still have a good life and live longer than ever before.”
Treviño Jones is also the founder and director of the Cancer Risk Reduction and Education Clinic at the Mays Cancer Center. She said they are seeing more women with breast cancer at a younger age, especially in Hispanic women.
“There is an increased incidence of breast cancer just across the board,” Treviño Jones said. “And what’s most striking is that for Latino women, this is even higher than white women or Black women. The incidence of breast cancer as well is happening in younger women. And we’re not sure why.”
Research on what is being done to find out why we are seeing an increase in breast cancer and which treatments work best is what is being shared at the symposium.
Treviño Jones stressed the importance of talking to your primary care doctor about getting screened early, especially if you have a family history of cancer.
She said early detection and living a healthy lifestyle can be key to beating breast cancer.
“The best way for us to detect breast cancer is to actually find it before a woman can feel it,” Treviño Jones said. “So that means that she should be getting her mammograms starting at the age of 40 and possibly sooner if she has a family history of breast cancer in young women.”