Nursing Assignment 2: Risk Factors and Breast Cancer Assessment

This nursing assignment explores the concepts of relative risk and attributed risk in the context of breast cancer. The assignment begins by defining relative risk as the relationship between a health-related risk factor and the development of a health problem, emphasizing its role in linking risk factors to emerging health issues. The assignment then explains how changes in a patient's lifestyle, as prescribed by a doctor, can influence the relative risk of breast cancer. It also defines attributed risk as the health outcome when exposure to a deleterious health environment is removed, comparing the risk factors of breast cancer in exposed versus unexposed populations. The assignment provides an example where the risk of breast cancer is assessed in two groups, one with and one without risk factors. The student references several research papers to support the concepts discussed, including studies on breast cancer prevention, global cancer burdens, cigarette smoking and lung cancer, and the intake of fish and marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and their relationship with the risk of breast cancer. The assignment concludes by highlighting how both relative and attributed risk are used to assess the risk of breast cancer in both cancerous and non-cancerous patients.

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Relative risk is a concept in which, the connective linkage between a health related risk
factor and the relative development of the associated health problem is determined and hence, it
helps to connect the risk factor and emerging health issue by developing a link or relationship
between them (Pesch et al., 2012). In this context of breast cancer, the doctor prescribed several
changes in the patient’s lifestyle as the doctor believes that changes in the lifestyle can lead to
improve her condition. Hence, the formula for relative risk that is relative risk which is a result
of probability of the occurrence of improved health outcome and multiplication of it with loss of
negative health outcome will be the relative risk of the patients affected with breast cancer
(Cuzick et al., 2014). Therefore, the risk of breast cancer in this section will be higher.
Secondly, the attributed risk is the health outcome, if the exposure to deleterious health
environment is deleted from the scenario. In this scenario of patient affected with breast cancer,
it is the rate at which the risk factors of breast cancer are at contact with the patients versus the
rate of completely unexposed population (De Martel et al., 2012). Hence, for this assessment the
population having complete risk of breast cancer will be assessed with the help of population that
do not bear risk related to breast cancer. Therefore, according to the assessment, if 21 patients
out of 100 do bear the risk of breast cancer and 79 people has no risk related to it, then while
deciding the risk related to emergence of breast cancer to a greater likelihood will be determined
and the risk of acquiring breast cancer for both the groups will be higher (Zheng et al., 2013).
Hence, in this way, both the relative and attributed risk will determine that risk of breast cancer
will be assessed with both cancer and non-cancerous patients for the assessment.

2NURSING ASSIGNMENT
References
Cuzick, J., Sestak, I., Forbes, J. F., Dowsett, M., Knox, J., Cawthorn, S., ... & Bonanni, B.
(2014). Anastrozole for prevention of breast cancer in high-risk postmenopausal women
(IBIS-II): an international, double-blind, randomised placebo-controlled trial. The
Lancet, 383(9922), 1041-1048.
De Martel, C., Ferlay, J., Franceschi, S., Vignat, J., Bray, F., Forman, D., & Plummer, M.
(2012). Global burden of cancers attributable to infections in 2008: a review and
synthetic analysis. The lancet oncology, 13(6), 607-615.
Pesch, B., Kendzia, B., Gustavsson, P., Jöckel, K. H., Johnen, G., Pohlabeln, H., ... &
Wichmann, H. E. (2012). Cigarette smoking and lung cancer—relative risk estimates for
the major histological types from a pooled analysis of case–control studies. International
journal of cancer, 131(5), 1210-1219.
Zheng, J. S., Hu, X. J., Zhao, Y. M., Yang, J., & Li, D. (2013). Intake of fish and marine n-3
polyunsaturated fatty acids and risk of breast cancer: meta-analysis of data from 21
independent prospective cohort studies. Bmj, 346, f3706.