Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer and is the second leading cause of cancer death among women, after lung cancer. The early symptoms include a lump in the breast, a change in the breast shape, dimpling of the skin, or fluid discharge from the nipple. Sometimes, you might experience a newly-inverted nipple or a red or scaly patch of skin. There are many effective treatments for breast cancer. More often than not, the patient survives it with very few side effects.
Whatever might be the treatment for breast cancer, the main aim is to rid the body of as much cancer as possible to avoid any recurrence.
Before going in for any particular treatment of cancer, a doctor will consider the following:
Some treatments of breast cancer destroy and remove the disease within the breast and the nearby tissues, such as the lymph nodes, while others destroy or control cancer cells all over the body.
1. Surgery
In this form of treatment, the entire breast is removed. It is called a mastectomy. Sometimes, only the tumor and the tissues around it are removed. This is known as lumpectomy or breast-conserving surgery.
2. Radiation therapy
In this, controlled doses of radiation are targeted at the tumor in order to destroy the cancer cells. A patient may undergo this after a month of the surgery along with chemotherapy.
3. Chemotherapy
This is one of the most commonly used treatments of breast cancer in which specific medications are used to kill cancer cells. They are potent medicine, but they often lead to side effects such as hair loss, nausea, early menopause, fatigue, and hot flashes.
4. Hormone therapy
It uses drugs to prevent hormones, especially estrogen, from increasing the growth of breast cancer cells. Medicines such as tamoxifen are used for women before and after menopause and aromatase inhibitors are used for postmenopausal women.
5. Targeted therapy
Medicines like lapatinib, pertuzumab, and trastuzumab are used to prompt the body’s immune system to get rid of cancer. They only target breast cancer cells that have high levels of a protein called HER2.
There are many side effects due to the treatment of breast cancer, so before going ahead with any treatment, you should be aware of them. For instance, chemotherapy and radiation would destroy breast cancer cells, but they can also affect healthy cells and cause some reactions such as vomiting, mouth sores, hair loss, bleeding, diarrhea, loss of appetite, weakness, weight gain, early menopause, and a high risk of infections.