Partial Breast Radiation Procedure Giving Women More Options Against Cancer
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - The more than 2,000 women with breast cancer each year face some difficult decisions: Get a mastectomy, or remove just the tumor and undergo weeks of radiation.
A new, less intense treatment is now available, reports CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez.
After having a lumpectomy to remove stage one breast cancer, Wendy Lybarger expected radiation treatments to keep her from her work as a pastor.
"To have to travel two hours, two-plus hours out of my day each day for multiple weeks for radiation treatment, I wasn't sure how I was going to manage that," she said.
Instead of radiating the entire breast, Lybarger received focused radiation to the small area where her tumor was removed, a treatment plan that took just five days.
"When you look at women who do get a recurrence in their breast after lumpectomy, it almost always, - 80 to 90 percent of the time - comes back to the same spot in the breast," said Dr. Julia White.
White led a study at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, that found cancer recurrence among early-stage patients who received lumpectomy and radiation was less than 5 percent after 10 years, and the difference between those who had full and partial breast radiation was less than 1 percent.
The results were even better among women over 50 with hormone sensitive cancer.
"The short five-day treatment is just as good as the whole breast irradiation for four to six weeks," she said.
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While partial breast radiation isn't an option for every patient, it gives more women a less intense but still effective option when deciding if a lumpectomy is right for them.
"It really facilitates more women having access to good radiation so that if they want to preserve their breast, they're able to," said White.
It allowed Lybarger to continue to do what she loves without skipping a beat.
"I lived life fully through the treatments, before the treatments, after the treatments," she said.
Because partial breast radiation is doable at many medical centers, the proof that it's easier and just as effective could allow women to choose a less disruptive treatment for their breast cancer.
