Things to Know Before Breast Cancer Treatment

Breast cancer is the fear of any woman in the world. It is not difficult to know that either a friend or a relative who has or had breast cancer. It has been the leading cause of death for women between the ages of 35 and 54. However, did every woman know the things before treatment of breast cancer? Thus, today’s post is all about the things to know before breast cancer treatment to help women understand about these.

As we all know, all types of cancer cell can spread to the whole body from the origin. Most of the time, when the cancer has been detected the chance that the disease has spread is high. Once a lump has been detected on the breast, there may already be an average of 45 billion cancer cells present, and some of them have been metastasized to other parts of the body. Thus, the early detection of breast cancer is important to prevent the cancer cells from spreading. I have been covered the Early Detection of Breast Cancer in my previous post.

Conventional medicine divides the stages of the breast cancer based on certain factors like tumour size, lymph node involvement, or distal spread. According to the stage of the cancer, the oncologist may suggest many options or even combinations from simple lumpectomy (breast-conserving surgery) to complete mastectomy (removal of one or both breast), radiation, and chemotherapy.

Yet, not all the therapies are suitable for a particular patient. Usually, the oncologist will design the most suitable treatment to the patient. The use of radiation and chemotherapy will certainly weaken the immune system of the cancer patient. This leaves the cancer patient more vulnerable to the development of metastatic lesions in many of our body organs. Though, there are many successful cases that using the radiation and chemotherapy to improve the survival of breast cancer patients with appropriately dose.

The oncologist will only give the best recommendations to the breast cancer patient according to the stages of the disease. The patient needs to make informed decisions whether which therapies to utilize. Therefore, the final decision is on the patient’s hand.

In conclusion, we need to know a little bit about the breast cancer so that we will not panic when facing on this disease especially for the women. This is only an introduction of breast cancer treatment. I will cover the details in my future post in Cytogenetics and Cancer Research blog.