Breast cancer is the most dreaded cancer in women. Breasts play an important part in the woman’s psyche. When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer she is devastated. It is very important to seek medical help to treat the cancer.
There are different techniques involved in breast cancer treatment. Your doctor and you can plan your treatment. Generally surgery is the only way to treat breast cancer. It is followed by radiation therapy, chemotherapy, targeted therapy and hormonal therapy.
Radiation therapy is location specific that means it targets the cells that come directly in the beam. The radiation kills the cancer cells. It is used before and/or after the surgery.
Chemotherapy uses drugs that are called cytotoxic drugs. These drugs kill cancer cells in the body. The cytotoxic drugs are administered either by injection or given orally.
There could be three different strategies used as breast cancer treatment. Chemotherapy is given prior to the surgery is called pre surgical chemotherapy. This is given to kill stray cancer cells and to reduce the tumor size. Adjuvant chemotherapy is given to the patients who have under gone surgery and radiation. This is used to reduce the chances of relapse. The therapeutic chemotherapy is given to those women when the cancer is spread beyond the breast.
Chemotherapy is given in cycles. Generally a gap of three weeks is given for the patient to regain the strength back as he may be facing side effects of the drug. The hormone therapy helps in preventing estrogen to stimulate breast cancer cells. This therapy is recommended to all patients who have hormone receptor positive cancer. The size of the tumor or its spread to lymph nodes does not matter.
Tamoxifen or Nolvadex and anti estrogen these drugs were commonly prescribed as breast cancer treatment and prevent breast cancer until recently. If the breast cancer no longer responds to Tamoxifen then Fulvestrant drug is prescribed. It not only blocks the estrogen receptor it destroys it. This drug is prescribed in case of menopausal women or women with advanced breast cancer. Sometimes Aromatase inhibitors are more effective than tamoxifen when used after the surgery. The aromatase inhibitors are often prescribed after two or three years of tamoxifen therapy.
Lapatinib is yet another drug used in breast cancer treatment. It is effective in women with HER2 positive breast cancer which does not responds to trastuzumab or chemotherapy.
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