More people are surviving breast cancer
Though hearing they may have breast cancer is still emotionally hard, women and men should take heart that greater awareness, widespread mammogram screening, early diagnosis and better treatment methods are saving more lives every year.
“We’ve had big advances on every level concerning breast cancer,” said Dr. Dean Currie, a general surgeon at Jackson Surgical Associates, who has a special interest in treating breast cancer. “The majority of women diagnosed with breast cancer today will be treated successfully and live normal lives.”
From greater awareness about the need for early screenings to better treatment, Dr. Currie sees many reasons for today’s higher success in curing breast cancer.
• “Women are more aware than ever of the need to be evaluated through clinical breast exams and mammograms,” he says.
• With the widespread use of screening mammography and women’s awareness to be screened regularly, many breast cancer lesions are being detected and diagnosed before the patient can even feel the lesion, Dr. Currie says. Early detection, before the cancer has a chance to grow and spread, greatly increases the cure rate, he adds. “This one single factor of early detection has had the greatest impact on our breast cancer success rate.”
• Treatment methods have improved. They include the use of taxane chemotherapy, immune therapy with Herceptin (an antibody that attacks an aggressive gene found in some breast cancers) and advances in hormone therapy. For example, studies show that the use of Herceptin early in treating breast cancer can cut reccurrences of the cancer by 50%.
• “We also are refining the decision on who would benefit from chemotherapy and who would not,” said Dr. Currie. In the past, he explained, the decision to do additional treatment besides surgery depended on the stage of the cancer. “Now, the patient’s cancer can be evaluated for the presence of certain genes that predict the behavior of that person’s particular tumor.”
• Genetic research has also discovered genetic mutations that increase a person’s chance of getting breast cancer, Dr. Currie said. Known as the breast cancer (BRCA) gene test, the test can determine if a person carries one of those genetic mutations, meaning she has up to an 80 percent chance of getting breast cancer. “This allows a patient to be proactive,” Dr. Currie explained. Some patients, for example, opt for more frequent breast screenings; others may decide to have a mastectomy.
• Advancements also are being made in breast cancer surgery. “Surgery is more targeted,” he said. “Instead of removing all of the lymph nodes, for example, we can target those that drain the breast first and are more likely to have cancer cells.”
Besides the improvement in the breast cancer cure rate, other advancements are helping women who may have breast cancer.
For example, the physicians at Jackson Surgical Associates have less invasive procedures to sample a breast lesion to determine the presence of cancer. The Mammotome vacuum-assisted needle biopsy uses ultrasound to find and remove breast lesions at their clinic. The physicians also were the first to use stereotactic needle biopsy of breast lesions and sentinel lymph node biopsy in West Tennessee. All of these procedures can be done in an outpatient setting, are less invasive and less painful. The scar from the biopsy is imperceptible, said Dr. Currie.
“These procedures avoid surgery for the majority of patients because the majority of breast legions prove to be benign,” he added. (The surgeon sends the suspect breast tissue to a pathologist, who then determines if it is benign or cancerous.)
All of this is good news for those who may have breast cancer. But, even with the advancements in overcoming the disease, breast cancer still has an emotional impact, Dr. Currie says. “Even though women are much more educated now about breast cancer, it’s still an emotional road when they find out they may have it. In my experience, it has a larger emotional impact on the patient than any other malignancy.”