Patricia Muñoz was bathing her daughter Maura when, as she dried her and applied cream, she noticed “a small lump in her breast”.
The girl lives in Quillota, Chile. A doctor had already noticed an abnormality during a checkup when she was 5 and warned that the lump was not normal and could grow. After overcoming delays in receiving public healthcare, a biopsy in October 2022 revealed the unthinkable: breast cancer, just before she turned 7. Two months later, Maura underwent a mastectomy of her left breast.
Felipe Tagle, of the Chilean Association of Oncology Patients, said that “there is no similar case anywhere in the world” and estimated the odds at “one in 200 million”, perhaps one in 400 million. Another specialist, pediatric oncologist Francisco Barriga, described it as “completely anecdotal”. For Tagle, the only similar case is that of a 10-year-old girl in the United States.
The family was waiting for test results to rule out metastasis and consulting doctors in Spain. The only thing Maura has told her mother during appointments with the oncologist is that she doesn’t want to go bald.
