Medical Services • Breast Care

Decision-making involves the active participation of both you and your doctors

There are many advanced options available today to treat breast cancer. In many cases, minimally invasive surgeries are recommended that allow you to conserve your breasts and avoid a mastectomy. That’s why it is so critical to meet with your doctor and talk about all your options.

You will also benefit from NCH’s multidisciplinary team of specialists including radiologists, oncologists, surgeons, and radiation oncologists. They meet every week to review diagnosed cases such as yours and discuss different treatments and therapies.

Determining what to do depends on your type of breast cancer

Your doctors use the following factors to determine the most effective treatment:

• The size of your tumor, if lymph nodes are involved and if the cancer has spread to other parts of your body. There are four stages of breast cancer referred to as stages I, II, III, and IV.
• If your cancer is sensitive to hormones – if there is presence of estrogen and progesterone receptors
• HER/2 neu gene – if this is present, there is a higher chance of a recurrence

Systemic and local therapies

Breast cancer is treated with surgery (either breast conserving procedures or a mastectomy) and radiation therapy. These are referred to as local therapies because they target the tumor directly. However, it is sometimes difficult for your doctor to determine if the cancer cells have spread. In these cases, your doctor will also recommend one or a combination of systemic therapies, which travel through the bloodstream looking for additional cancer cells.

• Hormone therapy – blocks the effects of your body’s hormones. If your cancer is hormone-sensitive, this may be used in combination with chemotherapy
• Immune therapy – Called Herceptin, it blocks the effect of a protein called HER2, which is found on the surface of some cancer cells and signals them to grow. It reduces the risk of recurrence by 50%.
• Chemotherapy treatments – A combination of drugs that kill cancer cells, given in a specific order for a specific period of time and then followed by a recovery time
• Radiation therapy – A local treatment that affects only the part of the body being treated. It uses special equipment to deliver high doses of radiation that destroys cancer cells. The most common internal radiation is called MammoSite® RTS – a system of radiation delivery using a small balloon catheter.