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Can Breast Cancer Recurrence be Prevented

11th May, 2011 - Posted by health news - No Comments

In accordance with the cancer cases survey, there are more than 215,000 women have been identified as breast cancer patients each year. Basically, the breast cancer patients are not only given the surgery, sometimes they must go through chemotherapy or radiation therapy to fully eliminate the cancer. Subsequently, these women may need to make a decision with their medical doctor if they should have adjuvant therapy which is the treatment to help stop their cancer from coming back again. You may interested to read about Malaysia Cancer Research and How to Prepare Radiation for Breast Cancer too.

Whenever a woman’s breast cancer does come back or propagates to other areas of the body, the woman could possibly be at greater risk of dying from the disease. Women whose breast cancer is observed in the nearby lymph nodes at diagnosis and those who acquire chemotherapy after surgery are thought to be at increased risk for breast cancer recurrence.

Postmenopausal women whose early-stage breast cancer is hormone-sensitive have a new option as their first hormone therapy right after surgery. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently permitted Femara (letrozole tablets) on December 28, 2005 for this type of use. This acceptance was based on a median of a couple of years of therapy. The study remains ongoing to determine the long-term safety and effectiveness of Femara. Already a leading breast cancer treatment, Femara is now the only medicine in a group called aromatase inhibitors that is approved to be used both immediately following surgery and after five years of tamoxifen. The FDA issued Femara a high priority evaluation, a distinction reserved for medications which could possibly offer a major growth compared to items currently on the market.

A panel from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the nation’s leading group of oncologists, suggests aromatase inhibitors, including Femara, be part of the ideal adjuvant treatment for this group of women.

“One of the greatest fears confronted by women who are actually treated for early breast cancer is that their cancer will come back. With Femara, we now have a possibility that will help address that fear early on, even in patients who we know face the maximum risk of recurrence,” said Matthew Ellis, MD, PhD, FRCP, director of the Breast Cancer Program at Washington University in St. Louis.

In a very large clinical study of post-surgery breast cancer therapy, researchers compared the effectiveness of Femara and tamoxifen, some other drug prescribed after surgery. An analysis conducted after 26 months demonstrated that Femara lowered the risk of breast cancer coming back by 21% over the reduction offered by tamoxifen. Patients taking Femara also showed a 27 % decrease in the risk of the cancer spreading to distant areas of the body.

In this study, women at elevated risk of recurrence experienced the greatest benefit from Femara. Femara lowered this risk by twenty nine % in women whose breast cancer had already metastasize towards the lymph nodes during the time of diagnosis and by 30 % in women who had prior chemotherapy. The final results also showed that during these high-risk women, Femara reduced the risk of cancer spreading to distant parts of the body by 33 % and 31 %, respectively.

In this study, Femara was generally well tolerated with the most basic unwanted effects together with hot flashes, joint pain, night sweats, weight gain and nausea.

In conclusion, we hope that Femara would be the treatment for us to avoid the breast cancer recurrence. The secondary cancer is far more dangerous than the primary cancer.