News

High rate of mastectomy at Lautoka Hospital

October 14, 2022 12:57 pm

An average three mastectomy surgeries are performed at the Lautoka Hospital in a week says Surgical Registrar, Doctor Suzianna Raza.

Speaking during their Pinktober Awareness today, Dr Raza says this indicates an alarming rate of breast cancer prevalence in the country.

She says just yesterday they had a mastectomy.

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Mastectomy is a surgical operation to remove a breast.

“What we see is people still do present late and some of the reasons as to why they have presented late is although they find a lump the very first thing they think of it is cancer and they don’t want to come.”

Dr Raza says therefore it’s crucial for people to present their cases early to hospitals as cancer is treatable.

She hopes the Pinktober month is used to raise awareness on this killer disease as it’s still the leading type of cancer in Fiji.

The Fiji Cancer Society recorded a total of 1,294 cancer patients from 2018 to date.

With this, breast cancer is still the leading cancer type with up to 434 cases registered so far.