The Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool

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The Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool allows health professionals to estimate a woman's risk of developing invasive breast cancer over the next 5 years and up to age 90 (lifetime risk).

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The tool uses a woman’s personal medical and reproductive history and the history of breast cancer among her first-degree relatives (mother, sisters, daughters) to estimate absolute breast cancer risk—her chance or probability of developing invasive breast cancer in a defined age interval.

 Further studies are needed to refine and validate these models.

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This tool cannot accurately estimate breast cancer risk for:

• Women carrying a breast-cancer-producing mutation in BRCA1 or BRCA2

• Women with a previous history of invasive or in situ breast cancer (lobular carcinoma in situ or ductal carcinoma in situ)

• Women in certain other subgroups (see Other Risk Assessment Tools section)

 

Although a woman's risk may be accurately estimated, these predictions do not allow one to say precisely which woman will develop breast cancer. In fact, some women who do not develop breast cancer have higher risk estimates than some women who do develop breast cancer.

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