TREATMENTS FOR BREAST CANCER

Women living with breast cancer deserve real tender care, breast cancer is a heartless beast, growing in the unsuspecting, taking the lives of the innocent. Breast cancer is a respecter of no race, personality or even gender. The statistics show that about 45,000 American women will loss their lives to breast cancer each year, this statistics sobering, showing the fatal reality of breast cancer as a debilitating disease.

Recently, scientist have being working tirelessly developing effective breast cancer treatments that drastically reduce the mortality rate of breast cancer patients. In this article a few effective breast cancer treatments will be analyzed.

  BIOPSY: Biopsy is the removal of a sample of tissue from a living person for laboratory examination. Biopsy for breast cancer a doctor performs a minor surgery on the patient removing a lump for diagnosis, this surgical biopsy is called open biopsy. Other biopsies are;

·         External biopsy

·         Aspiration biopsy

·         Punch biopsy

More information will be provided for other biopsies in subsequent articles.

CHEMOTHERAPY: chemotherapy is the use of chemical agents to treat diseases, infections or other disorders, especially cancer.

Paul ehrlich a German bacteriologist and Nobel laureate was among the noble contributors to chemotherapy. Ehrlich contribution was in syphilis treatment, but his work help lay the foundation for others to build on, and to discover new treatments for breast cancer.

Chemotherapy drug work by attacking a specific tumor, and travel through the blood stream to kill other cancerous cells in other parts of the body. Doctors prescribe chemotherapeutic drugs if the patient’s diagnosis indicate that cancerous cells have spread to lymph nodes, or In addition to surgery to reduce the risk breast reoccurrence, or to help reduce the size of breast cancer tumors so that only a part of the breast is surgically removed not the whole breast. Chemotherapy is a very effective breast cancer treatment, the only disadvantage is that the chemotherapeutic drugs may not perfectly differentiate between cancerous and non-cancerous cells, which could make the drugs destroy healthy cells.

RADIATION THERAPY

Radiation therapy or radiation oncology is the therapeutic use of ionize or x-ray radiation at various intensities to treat various cancerous cells. Radiation therapy is another ingenious invention used for breast cancer treatment. radiation therapy is based on the discovery that normal cells and cancer tumor cells respond differently to radiation. After both normal cells and cancer tumor cells are exposed to radiation, cancer tumor cells are destroyed completely and normal cells even though are damage grow back.

Depending on the stage of breast cancer, doctors prescribe radiation therapy after surgery to ensure that cancer does not reoccurred and to reduce the pain from surgery.

There are to major types of radiation therapy:

1.      Internal radiation therapy

2.      External radiation therapy

Subsequent articles will provide information for these types of radiation therapy.

HORMONE THERAPY

Although, the specific cause of breast cancer is not yet know, scientist believe that female sex hormones, like estrogen and progesterone increase breast cancer cell growth. Hormone therapy is aimed at stopping the production of  hormones that increase the growth of breast cancer cells. Hormone therapy could be surgical or by drugs.

Estrogen and progesterone are produced from the  ovaries, surgical hormone therapy involves surgical removal of the ovaries to stop estrogen and progesterone production. Hormone therapy by drugs involves administering drugs to a breast cancer patient only on the basis that diagnosis show that the breast cancer cells are estrogen-receptor-positive or progesterone-receptor-positive. This is because hormone therapeutic drugs are meant to stop estrogen and progesterone production in other parts of the body after the ovaries are removed.

Thank you for reading this article.