Breast Cancer
Most Breast Cancer Surgeons Don’t Talk to Patients About Reconstruction Options
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Only a third of patients with breast cancer discussed breast reconstruction options with their surgeon before their initial surgery, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.
What’s more, women who did discuss reconstruction up front were four times more likely to have a mastectomy compared to those women who did not discuss reconstruction.
“The surgical decision making for breast cancer is really centered on patient preference. Long-term outcomes are the same regardless of whether a woman is treated with a lumpectomy or a mastectomy.
Breast cancer therapy response detected early
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A drop in circulating tumor cells (CTCs) indicates that chemotherapy is working in patients with metastatic breast cancer. This can be established within a few weeks, after the first cycle of treatment, a Georgetown University team reported at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
The researchers say that toxic side effects can be minimized and the effectiveness maximized throughout the course of treatment by periodic measurement of CTCs. The early detection of a poor treatment response allows the physician to switch the patient to another drug regimen that may be more effective.
New model predicts breast cancer risk in African-American women
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Researchers have developed a new risk prediction model that more accurately estimates the breast cancer risk of African American women, according to a study published online November 27 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool, also known as the Gail model, is widely used for estimating breast cancer risk and for determining which women are eligible for breast cancer prevention trials.
Non-Caucasians at higher risk for severe metastatic breast cancer pain
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A new study finds significant racial differences in the risk of pain related to metastatic breast cancer. An analysis by Dr. Liana Castel of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and colleagues found that non-whites experience poorer pain control among women with this disease. The study is published in the January 1, 2008 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
Studies indicate that chronic or recurrent pain affects 30 percent of all cancer patients and 60 to 90 percent of patients with advanced cancer. Age, race, tumor type, genetics, psychosocial context, and culture can all affect pain. However, it is unclear how pain is influenced by changes over the course of disease due to factors including radiation, surgery, and chemotherapy. The current study was among the first to examine whether race plays a role in patients’ experiences in pain over the course of metastatic cancer.
Sunlight may cut breast cancer risk for some women
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Exposure to sunlight may reduce the risk of advanced breast cancer in women with light skin pigmentation, according to the results of a population-based study appearing in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
“We believe that sunlight helps reduce women’s risk of breast cancer because the body manufactures the active form of vitamin D from exposure to sunlight,” lead author Dr. Esther M. John, from the Northern California Cancer Center in Fremont, said in a statement.
Double mastectomies to prevent cancer increase
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From 1998 through 2003, the rate of double mastectomies among women in the United States who had cancer diagnosed in only one breast more than doubled, according to a report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
“Many surgeons had noticed that more women were requesting double mastectomy for treatment of the cancer in only one breast. So, we weren’t surprised by the overall trend, but we were very surprised by the magnitude,” lead author Dr. Todd M. Tuttle said in an interview with Reuters Health.
Transparent zebrafish help researchers track breast cancer
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What if doctors could peer through a patient’s skin and see a cancer tumor growing? They’d be able to study how tumor cells migrate: how they look, how they interact with the blood system to find nourishment to grow and spread through the body.
Scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine can’t look through human skin. But a small, tropical minnow fish common to aquariums has given UCSD researchers a window for viewing live, human cancer cells in action.
Sunlight Exposure May Decrease Risk of Advanced Breast Cancer
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A research team from the Northern California Cancer Center, the University of Southern California, and Wake Forest University School of Medicine has found that increased exposure to sunlight – which increases levels of vitamin D in the body—may decrease the risk of advanced breast cancer.
In a study reported online this week in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the researchers found that women with high sun exposure had half the risk of developing advanced breast cancer, which is cancer that has spread beyond the breast, compared to women with low sun exposure.
Fetal cell ‘transplant’ could be a hidden link between childbirth and reduced risk of breast cancer
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Some benefits of motherhood are intangible, but one has been validated through biostatistical research: women who bear children have a reduced risk of developing breast cancer. In Seattle, Washington, researchers at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center believe they have identified a source of this protective effect: fetal cells “transplanted” to the mother before birth.
Their findings are presented in the October 1 issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Ultrasound plus mammography finds more cancers, but increases false positives
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Adding ultrasound to mammography finds more cancers than mammography alone, but also substantially increases the number of false positives, according to first-year results from a three-year study of the two tests.
“At this point, it’s not clear whether the benefit provided by ultrasound outweighs the additional expense, stress and inconvenience caused by the false positives,” said study co-author Etta Pisano, M.D., vice dean for academic affairs in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, Kenan professor of radiology and biomedical engineering and director of the UNC Biomedical Research Imaging Center.
U.S. breast cancer death rate drops more: report
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The death rate from breast cancer continues to drop steadily by about 2 percent a year, but black women are not seeing the same benefits as whites, the American Cancer Society said on Tuesday.
The group found that during 2001 through 2004, breast cancer diagnoses fell by an average of 3.7 percent a year—in part because women stopped taking hormone replacement therapy and in part because fewer got mammograms and therefore were not diagnosed.
Physiotherapy helpful after breast cancer surgery
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Women may benefit from physiotherapy if they experience shoulder pain and reduced arm function after they undergo surgery for breast cancer, doctors from the Netherlands report.
Physiotherapy is effective for shoulder disorders unrelated to breast cancer, Dr. Carien H. G. Beurskens from Radbound University Nijmegen Medical Centre and colleagues note in their report in the online journal BMC-Cancer.
Breast cancer prevention practices vary across Canada
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Breast cancer preventive practices for Canadian women carrying the cancer gene vary across the country, says University of Toronto research, and many women are not taking advantage of the options available.
The study, published in the journal Open Medicine, followed the experiences of Canadian women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation – a genetic mutation that predisposes them to a 87 per cent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer. Women carrying the gene have several options for cancer prevention including prophylactic surgery, chemoprevention and screening; however, researchers observed significant differences across Canada in the uptake of these preventions, with women in Quebec the least likely to use preventive measures.
Latest drugs improve survival for metastatic breast cancer
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Newer drug therapies available since the 1990s, in particular aromatase inhibitors, improve the survival of women with metastatic breast cancer in the general population, according to a new study. Published in the September 1, 2007 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study is the first to demonstrate that drugs made available to the general public in the 1990s have had a significant impact on population-based metastatic breast cancer survival rates, confirming findings from earlier clinical trials. Survival improved by approximately 30 percent as systemic therapy, in particular aromatase inhibitors, became more widely used.
Currently, women with metastatic breast cancer survive an average of approximately 24 months.
Breast tumor genes no hinder to cancer survival
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Women who develop breast cancer because they carry defective genes are no less likely to survive over the long term than other breast cancer patients, Canadian and Israeli researchers said on Wednesday.
Women with and without the best-known cancer genes had virtually the same overall survival rate after 10 years, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
