Research Article Pattern of Breast Cancer Distribution in Ghana: A Survey to Enhance Early Detection, Diagnosis, and Treatment Frank Naku Ghartey Jnr, 1 Akwasi Anyanful, 2 Sebastian Eliason, 3 Saanid Mohammed Adamu, 1 and Samuel Debrah 4 1 Department of Chemical Pathology, School of Medical Sciences, College of Health and Allied Sciences, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana 2 Department of Medical Biochemistry, School of Medical Sciences, College of Health and Allied Sciences, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana 3 Department of Community Medicine, School of Medical Sciences, College of Health and Allied Sciences, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana 4 Department of Surgery, School of Medical Sciences, College of Health and Allied Sciences, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana Correspondence should be addressed to Akwasi Anyanful; a.anyanful@uccsms.edu.gh Received 15 January 2016; Revised 26 April 2016; Accepted 14 July 2016 Academic Editor: Robert-Alain Toillon Copyright © 2016 Frank Naku Ghartey Jnr et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. Nearly 70% of women diagnosed with breast cancer in Ghana are in advanced stages of the disease due especially to low awareness, resulting in limited treatment success and high death rate. With limited epidemiological studies on breast cancer in Ghana, the aim of this study is to assess and understand the pattern of breast cancer distribution for enhancing early detection and treatment. Methods. We randomly selected and screened 3000 women for clinical palpable breast lumps and used univariate and bivariate analysis for description and exploration of variables, respectively, in relation to incidence of breast cancer. Results. We diagnosed 23 (0.76%) breast cancer cases out of 194 (6.46%) participants with clinically palpable breast lumps. Seventeen out of these 23 (0.56%) were premenopausal (<46.6 years) with 7 (0.23%) being below 35 years. With an overall breast cancer incidence of 0.76% in this study, our observation that about 30% of these cancer cases were below 35 years may indicate a relative possible shif of cancer burden to women in their early thirties in Ghana, compared to Western countries. Conclusion. Tese results suggest an age adjustment for breast cancer screening to early twenties for Ghanaian women and the need for a nationwide breast cancer screening to understand completely the pattern of breast cancer distribution in Ghana. 1. Introduction Cancer of the breast is the most common cancer in both developing and developed countries and is responsible for over one million in an estimated ten million neoplasms diagnosed in both sexes worldwide [1]. Breast cancer is also the primary cause of cancer death among women globally, responsible for about 425,000 deaths in 2010 [2]. In 2012, nearly 1.7 million new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed worldwide (second most common cancer overall afer cervical cancer), representing about 12% of all new cancer cases and 25% of all cancers in women [3]. Tis is an increase from 2010 when 1.6 million new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed [2]. Increasing incidence of breast cancer is also being reported for developing countries in Africa, in contrast to previous reports [4]. For example, a 2011 American Cancer Society study reports that “in several sub- Saharan African countries, breast cancer has now become the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women, a shif from previous decades in which cervical cancer was the most commonly diagnosed cancer [5].” Tis observation is consistent with studies in Cote d’Ivoire [6], Uganda [7, 8], Nigeria [9], and Ghana [10]. Tough these increases are still low compared to developed countries, higher mortality rates accounting for 75% of total deaths from the disease are observed in developing countries [11]. Tis is because Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Breast Cancer Volume 2016, Article ID 3645308, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2016/3645308