Medical Questions » Breasts, Female Questions » Question No. 171
| Question: | My mother has just been diagnosed as suffering from breast cancer. Please tell me, how is breast cancer treated, and is it successful? |
| Answer: | Once a breast lump is detected, a diagnosis can often be made before operation by methods such as x-rays of the breast (mammography) and needle biopsy. This is important as it allows the surgeon to discuss the diagnosis and method of treatment with the patient.
Radical mastectomy (removal of the breast and underlying muscles), and its accompanying disfigurement, is an operation of the past. It has been replaced by simple mastectomy in which only the breast is removed, leaving a cosmetically acceptable scar and scope for reconstruction of the breast by plastic surgery at a later date. Often the lymph glands under the arm will be removed at the same time, because this is the area that cancer spreads to first. Alternatively, or combined with this, a course of radiotherapy or chemotherapy (drugs) may be recommended.
In some women, equally good results in controlling the cancer can be obtained by removal of the lump alone, coupled with radiotherapy to the breast and excision of the under-arm glands. A gradually increasing proportion of women are being treated this way. Lumpectomy is only suitable for early cancers: more advanced cancers still require mastectomy. Thus delay in presentation can have a dramatic cosmetic effect as well as a prognostic one, and a return to a normal lifestyle may be only a couple of weeks away with the simpler procedure.
Two-thirds of all breast cancers may be cured. With early presentation and diagnosis, this can rise to 90%+. |
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