Advances In Conventional Breast Cancer Treatment
Early-stage, localized breast cancer is highly treatable, but not everyone is aware that cancer treatment in general has evolved and improved in the last few years. Advances in breast cancer treatment have improved patient outcomes while also reducing side effects patients may experience during treatment. Below are a few of the most promising developments.
Complementary And Alternative Medicine
Complementary and alternative medicine are medicines and health practices that are not standard cancer treatments. Complementary medicine is used in addition to standard treatments, and alternative medicine is used instead of standard treatments. Meditation, yoga, and supplements like vitamins and herbs are some examples.
Many kinds of complementary and alternative medicine have not been tested scientifically and may not be safe. Talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits before you start any kind of complementary or alternative medicine.
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Testicular tumors are considered very common among intact male dogs.
In fact, up to 27% of unneutered male dogs will eventually develop one or more Testicular tumors.
In total, they’re estimated to account for at least 4% to 7% percent of all tumors found in male dogs.
A variety of tumors affect the testicles.
Cancer of the lymph nodes is the most common Cancer found in young dogs and cats.
Dogs that have not been spayed also have the risk of developing Cancer of the uterus or the ovaries.
Male dogs that have not been neutered can develop testicular cancer.
When it comes to treating dogs with cancer, chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery are typically recommended either alone or in combination.
Veterinary medicine has made some recent strides in other treatments, such as immunotherapy or antibody therapy, but these are less prevalent than the first line treatments.
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Systemic Treatments For Stage Iv Breast Cancer
Treatment often continues until the cancer starts growing again or until side effects become unacceptable. If this happens, other drugs might be tried. The types of drugs used for stage IV breast cancer depend on the hormone receptor status, the HER2 status of the cancer, and sometimes gene mutations that might be found.
Can Breast Cancer Be Treated Without Surgery Md Anderson Wants To Find Out
For decades, nearly 100% of breast cancer patients have been treated with surgery, but now clinicians are charting new territory and investigating ways to “de-escalate” breast cancer treatment, Lucette Lagnado reports for the Wall Street Journal.
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Additional Considerations Before Making A Treatment Decision
So, how do you go about evaluating treatment options youre comfortable with that will also provide you with the long-term outcome youre hoping for? Being aware of advances in conventional treatment and the importance of incorporating integrated therapies is an important first step.
Other recommendations include:
Ask questions of any provider youre seeing to be sure you understand your options and associated risks. Your care providers job is to make informed recommendations based on the best available science and your unique situation. You then have the right to accept them, refuse them or ask whether there are alternatives.
Consider getting a second opinion. Its perfectly fine to seek a second opinion before making such an important decision. In fact, a second opinion may be a good way to investigate a cancer center that provides advanced conventional treatment while also offering access to integrative care.
You need to feel comfortable with your care providers and confident in your treatment plan. If integrative care is important to you, and if youre interested in combining supportive care services with conventional cancer treatment, seek out a conventional oncologist who understands and appreciates the value of these options. Ask questions to ensure he or she is willing to work with the naturopathic and/or other members youve assembled for your healing team.
Reasons To Wait A Short While
While information suggests having surgery within a few weeks and chemotherapy within a month is ideal, there are some very good reasons why you may wish to wait a few days or a few weeks to begin treatment.
Most surgeons and oncologists will reassure you that you have some time, though there are always exceptions to that general rule . Advantages of taking some time include:
Breast Cancer Doctor Discussion Guide
Get our printable guide for your next doctors appointment to help you ask the right questions.
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Medically Reviewed by: Dr. BautistaUpdated on: September 1, 2021
Whether youre researching breast cancer treatment plans for yourself, a family member, or a friend you might initially feel like conventional therapy options are the only way to go when fighting ones diagnosis of cancer.
These traditional treatments for breast cancer include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery, but alternative medicine offers the chance to do something different. There are strict regulations that the U.S. has against doctors providing less invasive and non-invasive holistic treatments, which is why leaders in alternative therapies and complementary treatments can predominantly be found in Tijuana, Mexico.
When putting up a fight against breast cancer, alternative medicine is the best medical treatment, as it focuses on building your system up rather than tearing it down. At ITC, we dont just want to kill cancerous cells we want to keep you healthy in body and spirit while we do it.
Read on to learn about alternative treatment for breast cancer.
What About Other Treatments That I Hear About
When you have cancer you might hear about other ways to treat the cancer or treat your symptoms. These may not always be standard medical treatments. These treatments may be vitamins, herbs, special diets, and other things. You may wonder about these treatments.
Some of these are known to help, but many have not been tested. Some have been shown not to help. A few have even been found to be harmful. Talk to your doctor about anything youre thinking about using, whether its a vitamin, a diet, or anything else.
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Is There A Breast Cancer Cure
There is currently no cure for metastatic breast cancer, or breast cancer that has spread to distant parts of the body. However, early stages of breast cancer that remain localized are highly treatable 99 percent of people who receive treatment in the earliest stages of breast cancer live for 5 years or longer after diagnosis, according to the
Treatment For Stage 3 Breast Cancer
for stage 3 breast cancer may include the following, depending on the type of cancer and other factors:
- chemotherapy
stage 4 breast cancer , also called metastatic breast cancer, has cancer that has spread to nearby lymph nodes and also more distant lymph nodes and other organs in the body.
Stage 4 breast cancer is the most advanced stage. Stage 4 breast cancer also may be breast cancer that returned to affect other parts of the body. Cancer that has returned in other parts of the body is called recurrent metastatic breast cancer
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Breast Cancer: Types Of Treatment
Have questions about breast cancer? Ask here.
ON THIS PAGE: You will learn about the different types of treatments doctors use for people with breast cancer. Use the menu to see other pages.
This section explains the types of treatments that are the standard of care for early-stage and locally advanced breast cancer. Standard of care means the best treatments known. When making treatment plan decisions, you are strongly encouraged to consider clinical trials as an option. A clinical trial is a research study that tests a new approach to treatment. Doctors want to learn whether the new treatment is safe, effective, and possibly better than the standard treatment. Clinical trials can test a new drug and how often it should be given, a new combination of standard treatments, or new doses of standard drugs or other treatments. Some clinical trials also test giving less treatment than what is usually done as the standard of care. Clinical trials are an option to consider for treatment and care for all stages of cancer. Your doctor can help you consider all your treatment options. Learn more about clinical trials in the About Clinical Trials and Latest Research sections of this guide.
Surgeons Excited At The Prospect Of New Treatment Option
Sheldon Feldman, chief of breast surgery at Montefiore Health System, who is involved in the NCI trial said that now that drug treatments have become more advanced, “medical therapy works better the role of surgery is less and less.”
Kuerer hopes the trials will prove that going surgery-free is an option for some women with breast cancer. “I would be ecstatic if all of us would be put out of business,” he said.
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Local Or Regional Treatments For Stage Iv Breast Cancer
Although systemic drugs are the main treatment for stage IV breast cancer, local and regional treatments such as surgery, radiation therapy, or regional chemotherapy are sometimes used as well. These can help treat breast cancer in a specific part of the body, but they are very unlikely to get rid of all of the cancer. These treatments are more likely to be used to help prevent or treat symptoms or complications from the cancer.
Radiation therapy and/or surgery may also be used in certain situations, such as:
- When the breast tumor is causing an open or painful wound in the breast
- To treat a small number of metastases in a certain area, such as the brain
- To help prevent or treat bone fractures
- When a cancer is pressing on the spinal cord
- To treat a blood vessel blockage in the liver
- To provide relief of pain or other symptoms anywhere in the body
In some cases, regional chemo may be useful as well.
If your doctor recommends such local or regional treatments, it is important that you understand the goalwhether it is to try to cure the cancer or to prevent or treat symptoms.
Radiation Therapy Side Effects
The side effects of radiation therapy depend on the type of radiation therapy youre having. In general, the side effects tend to develop as treatment goes on and may be more troubling toward the end of treatment. Overall, the most common side effects are redness, swelling, and skin peeling in the area being treated.
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Targeted Therapy For Breast Cancer
Targeted therapy refers to a variety of drugs that enter the bloodstream and treat cancer throughout the body. Targeted therapy drugs aim to attack cancer cells without harming healthy cells, and tend to have fewer side effects than chemotherapy drugs.
Targeted therapies are often used to treat HER2-positive breast cancers. These are cancers that have an excess of a protein called HER2 that promotes the growth of cancer cells.
Common targeted therapy drugs for HER2-positive breast cancers include:
- Monoclonal antibodies like trastuzumab are synthetic antibodies designed to attach to HER2 proteins and stop cells from growing.
- Antibody-drug conjugates like ado-trastuzumab emtansine attach to HER2 proteins on cancer cells and help chemotherapy reach them.
- Kinase inhibitors like Lapatinib block HER2 proteins.
Targeted therapies are also used to treat hormone receptor-positive breast cancer along with hormone therapy.
Common targeted therapy drugs for people with hormone receptor-positive cancers include:
- CDK4/6 inhibitors, which block CDK proteins in cancer cells to stop them from dividing and slow cancer growth.
- mTOR inhibitors, which block mTOR proteins in cancer cells to stop them from dividing and growing. This treatment is believed to help hormone therapy drugs work more efficiently.
- PI3K inhibitors, which block the PI3K proteins in cancer cells and helps prevent them from growing.
Common targeted therapy drugs for people with TNBC include:
Video Answer: Testicular Torsion
Between 60 to 80 percent of skin tumors in dogs are benign, meaning if you notice a lump on your dog’s skin, there’s a good chance it won’t be anything to worry about.
However, the visible appearance of a growth can’t be used to predict whether it’s cancerous.
Many skin tumors can be cured with early surgical removal.
Echocardiography may be recommended as some dogs may have tumor spread to the heart.
Surgery is the primary method of treatment for dogs with splenic masses.
dogs with a ruptured splenic mass requiring a blood transfusion are more likely to be diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma.
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What Is A Breast Cancer Recurrence
Breast cancer recurrence means that the cancer was diagnosed when limited to the breast and/or armpit lymph nodes, then treated, and at some time later has come back.
This can occur in several ways:
- Local and/or regional recurrence: the breast cancer that was previously treated returns within the breast, chest wall or regional lymph nodes.
- New primary breast cancer: an unrelated new breast cancer occurs in one or the other breast. This actually isnt a local recurrence at allits a new cancer in the breast . This typically occurs many years after the original cancer and in an entirely different area of the breast. Its pathology is often different lobular instead of ductal, for example. Though they are often counted as recurrences in the statistics for breast conservation, they should be treated as completely new cancers, much as with new cancers in the opposite breast.
- Distant or systemic recurrence or metastasis is much more serious than local recurrence and is synonymous with stage 4 disease. For breast cancer patients, the most common areas of spread are the bone, liver, lungs and brain
Breast cancer recurrence occurs if:
- Cells from the original breast cancer diagnosis break away and hide nearby in the breast or spread elsewhere in the body
- Treatment, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and/or hormone therapy have not gotten rid of all these cancer cells from the body.
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Progression During Hormone Therapy
For hormone receptor-positive cancers that were being treated with hormone therapy, switching to another type of hormone therapy sometimes helps. For example, if either letrozole or anastrozole were given, using exemestane, possibly with everolimus , may be an option. Another option might be using fulvestrant or a different aromatase inhibitor, along with a CDK inhibitor. If the cancer has a PIK3CA mutation and has grown while being treated with an aromatase inhibitor, fulvestrant with alpelisib might be considered. If the cancer is no longer responding to any hormone drugs, chemotherapy immunotherapy, or PARP inhibitors might be options depending on specific features of the cancer or any gene changes that might be present.
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How Do I Know Which Breast Cancer Treatment To Choose
Your doctor will think about a few things before they recommend a treatment for you:
- The type of breast cancer you have
- The size of your tumor and how far the cancer has spread in your body, called the stage of your disease
- Whether your tumor has things called receptors for HER2 protein, estrogen, and progesterone, or other specific features.
Your age, whether youâve gone through menopause, other health conditions you have, and your personal preferences also play a role in this decision-making process.
Treatment Of Breast Cancer Stages I
The stage of your breast cancer is an important factor in making decisions about your treatment.
Most women with breast cancer in stages I, II, or III are treated with surgery, often followed by radiation therapy. Many women also get some kind of systemic drug therapy . In general, the more the breast cancer has spread, the more treatment you will likely need. But your treatment options are affected by your personal preferences and other information about your breast cancer, such as:
- If the cancer cells have hormone receptors. That is, if the cancer is estrogen receptor -positive or progesterone receptor -positive.
- If the cancer cells have large amounts of the HER2 protein
- How fast the cancer is growing
- Your overall health
- If you have gone through menopause or not
Talk with your doctor about how these factors can affect your treatment options.
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Radiation Therapy And Sun Exposure
During radiation treatment, its best to keep the treated area completely out of the sun. This can be especially difficult if youre having radiation therapy in areas or seasons with warmer weather. To help avoid sun exposure:
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Wear clothing or a bathing suit with a high neckline, or wear a rash guard top.
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Try to keep the area covered whenever you go outside. An oversized cotton shirt works well and allows air to circulate around the treated area.
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Avoid chlorine, which is very drying and can make any skin reactions youre having worse. Chlorine is used to disinfect most pools and hot tubs.
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If you do want to swim in a pool, you might want to spread petroleum jelly on the treated area to keep the chlorine away from your skin.
After your radiation treatment is completed, the treated skin may be more sensitive to the sun than it was in the past, so you might need to take extra protective steps when you go out in the sun:
Can Breast Cancer Be Treated Without Surgery
13 March 2019
A recent news article has called attention to an ongoing clinical trial, which is evaluating whether certain patients can avoid surgery for breast cancer. The article has raised many questions, so with the help of the trial principal investigator, surgical oncologist Dr. Henry Kuerer from M.D. Anderson, here is some clarification.
The most important point to stress is that currently, surgery is a necessary, standard of care component for the management of breast cancer. Patients interested in avoiding surgical resection of the tumor or tumor site should do so only in the context of a prospective controlled clinical trial, which has very specific eligibility requirements and other safety measures in place.
Patients with triple negative and Her2/neu over-expressed breast cancers very often receive a recommendation for chemotherapy due to the more aggressive nature of these tumors and improvements in survival with chemotherapy. Currently, neoadjuvant chemotherapy is usually used, which allows an assessment of tumor response. In about 50% of cases, no residual tumor is found in the area of surgical resection known as a pathologic complete response . Patients and their surgeons began to ask: If its all gone, why is surgery necessary? Eligibility for the currently accruing clinical trial includes patients with triple negative or Her2+ cancers that are 5cm or smaller, with 4 or fewer involved axillary lymph nodes.
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