Making Strides on the Breast Cancer Battle
Posted 10-13-2009 12:40 am
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As many know, October is our national Breast Cancer Awareness month. With each passing year, we become more and more knowledgeable and apt to beat the battle that plagues the more than 190,000 women (and some men) each year.
 Thanks to huge improvements in prevention, detection and treatment, breast cancer is losing its once strong hold on our population. Although statistics show that more than 190,000 people will get diagnosed with breast cancer this year, a great many of them will go on to live cancer-free lives due to the colossal improvements in how breast cancer is prevented, detected, and treated.
According to a recent article on CNN.com, here are the top reasons why we are winning the war on breast cancer:
• We know more than ever. Scientists now know that breast cancer takes the form of many diseases and that each tumor has a unique genetic fingerprint. This, in turn, helps physicians to target treatment more effectively.
• Treatment is personalized. Researchers now know that women who are diagnosed with breast cancer in the early stages respond well to hormonal therapies, which starve breast cancer cells of the hormones they need to grow. Additionally, since 2004, the Oncotype DX test helps identify the best treatment available for the patients. Directly from the article - "In the past, we were giving chemotherapy to women who would have done just as well on hormonal therapy," says Dr. Susan Love, president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation and clinical professor of surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Now, with this test, we can tell if a woman doesn't need it. That's great." This means patients may be be spared chemo's nausea, exhaustion, and hair loss.
• Surgery is less traumatic. Mastectomies are now performed by the surgeon in a manner that cores out the breast tissue while saving the skin envelope – a procedure that can work for many women who don’t have a tumor under the nipple or close to the skin. Women who are in need of a mastectomy are highly recommended to ask their surgeon if this is an option – presently less than 10 percent of women are offered the option. Alternatively, lumpectomy plus radiation has proven as effective as mastectomy for more than 60 percent of women with breast cancer.
• Radiation is much safer.
• Reconstruction looks great.
• Overall, there are fewer complications.
• Research is going strong. Effective research efforts for breast cancer will span decades, helping researchers to identify risk factors that may alter the breast cancer prevention landscape forever.
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