???Our study compared the two radiation therapy techniques available to women with early-stage breast cancer,??? said Dr. Benjamin Smith of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, who worked on the study. He said women who were treated with the localized radiation technique have double the risk for needing a mastectomy within five years, either because a breast tumor came back or because of complications caused by the radiation itself.
The MD Anderson team studied a form of the rapid radiation treatment known as brachytherapy, in which radiation is administered to women through a catheter to kill breast cancer cells that might linger after surgery. It was first approved in 2002 and has become increasingly popular. The treatment is typically done a few days after a woman's tumor is removed. Patients are typically treated twice a day for five to seven days. More traditional radiation treatment can take five to seven weeks.
The study is based on analysis of Medicare claim forms from 130,535 beneficiaries nationwide, who were diagnosed with cancer between 2000 and 2007. ???In our study of Medicare patients, we found a consistent increase in APBI brachytherapy, from less than 1 percent in 2000 to 13 percent in 2007. It's our guess that this trend has continued,??? Smith said in a statement.
During the same eight-year period, about 4 percent of patients treated with brachytherapy underwent a mastectomy in the following five years, compared to only 2.2 percent of those treated with whole breast irradiation. In addition, brachytherapy was associated with a higher rate of infections, rib fractures, fat necrosis and breast pain.
Although the overall risks were low, the team said it is important for doctors to explain the potential risks and benefits of this treatment to their patients.
Chemotherapy for breast cancer
A new study from Oxford University that was recently published in the Lancet medical journal has shown that modern chemotherapy drugs are reducing breast cancer death rates.
The study included data from 123 trials conducted over the past four decades involving about 100,000 women. Findings showed that standard while chemotherapy treatments in the 1980s reduced breast cancer mortality by nearly one-quarter, the effectiveness of modern chemo drugs cut the death rates by about one-third when compared to patients not undergoing chemotherapy.
The positive impact was applicable to all women regardless of age, tumor size, level of spread, and whether or not the cancer was sensitive to estrogen. However, for ER-positive cancers, which are sensitive to estrogen, a combination of chemotherapy and hormone (endocrine) therapy was found to be more effective than hormone treatment alone.