By Anson Lee
Even though medical technology has advanced significantly, the battle with cancer remains difficult. Women can get breast cancer, which can be a potentially dangerous condition if it is not detected promptly. In recent BNN breaking news, older breast cancer patients can avoid radiation therapy following surgery. It has no detrimental effects on their chances of surviving the disease.
The findings that suggest the new change are as follows:
If the radiation is skipped after surgery, it may not affect the whole survival of a woman who is 65 or older. If people had small hormone-positive breast cancer tumors, they could avoid radiation if they had completed five years of complete endocrine therapy. This study was recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine and drew the attention of many readers. However, it is also associated with a high risk of cancer returning in the same breast.
The recent findings suggest that therapies like radiation can have side effects like breast pain and fatigue associated with lung and heart disease. It may not be necessary to increase overall survival in the group if endocrine therapy is used.
Understand more about endocrine therapy.
Endocrine therapy is a hormone treatment that consists of blocking, adding, or even removing hormones to deal with a specific illness. It includes stopping or slowing down certain cancer cells’ growth.
The findings address the long-standing issue of older women receiving treatment that they can tolerate despite their low risk of breast cancer. Ho and Bellon wrote in one study that radiation therapy offers the treatment. It is one of the discussions in a lengthy list that consists of radiotherapy regimens with small target volumes. Furthermore, this treatment can put a strain on relationships and time. As a result, solid data support the suggestion that omitting radiotherapy in some patients is acceptable.
This was based on the research data made from 1,326 women with breast cancer who were 65 years old or more. From 2003 to 2009, the data made on 658 women who were randomly assigned to get radiation therapy as a part of their treatment while 668 did not get any radiation therapy. This trial was conducted in 76 centers fo Greece, the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Australia
The research shows that cancer recurrence was in the same breast that was common amongst the participants who did not get radiation. The cumulative occurrence of the local rise was 9,5% amongst the people with no radiation and 0.9% amongst the people who were in the radiation group.
Patients who received radiation therapy had a 10-year recurrence rate, whereas those who received chemotherapy had a shorter recurrence rate. However, the number of people who did not get radiation therapy had risen without an apparent plateau. The absolute difference in the local reoccurrence incidence is about 10 years which seems modest.
Conclusion
With this BNN breaking spreading across the world, there is still a debate on whether or not to include radiation therapy as a treatment against breast cancer. In a country like the US, 29% of breast cancer diagnoses are amongst women between 65 to 74 years of age. Some patients decide to skip the radiation for reasons like side effects while some choose to continue with this therapy even if there is still a low risk of the cancer reoccurrences.
