Treatments For Metastatic Breast Cancer

Treatments For Metastatic Breast Cancer

Metastatic breast cancer is the most advanced stage of breast cancer. Even after treatment, some cancer cells may not die and continue multiplying. These cells may spread to other parts of the body through blood or lymphatic vessels and start the development of cancer in those areas. This stage of the cancer is called metastatic breast cancer.

Metastatic breast cancer can either recur, that is, the treatment for breast cancer may have completed, but the cancer cells that escaped from being killed make the cancer recur, or may happen during the course of treatment, when the cancer is so aggressive that it spreads out despite of the treatments, or, in some cases when diagnosis is very late, and the cancer has spread out, metastatic might be the very first diagnosis.

Metastasis usually occurs in bones, and organs like lungs and brains. Unfortunately, breast cancer has the highest chance of metastasizing. If you have had breast cancer, and later develop another form of cancer, in all probability, it is breast cancer recurring. The fortunate side of this is that breast cancer is very much treatable. However, if you develop breast cancer again in the breast that was not diseased earlier, it might just be a new cancer.

Metastatic breast cancer develops in almost thirty out of hundred women who have had breast cancer, which makes knowledge about it so necessary. When the cancer has not metastasized to organs like the lungs and brain, or when there is a presence of estrogen and progesterone hormones in cancer tissues, the cancer is treatable. Also, if you have already not undergone many treatments for your previous cancer, and the malignant cells show some change after therapies, your treatment can be successful.

Metastatic breast cancer, owing to its nature, requires extensive treatment. Therapies like chemotherapy, hormonal treatment, immune therapy alone with regular mammograms, ultrasounds, CT scans, MRIs, bone scans etc. are necessary. The treatments can be purpose-specific. For treating the whole body, systemic therapies have to be implemented; for treatment of specific organs, local treatments like mastectomy and lumpectomy are done, and for alleviating pain, therapies along with oral aspirin intake are adopted.

Because metastatic breast cancer means cancer spreading to various parts of the body, complete sure is very difficult. There will come a point when you will have to stop undergoing treatment, even when your cancer is not fully cured. You have the choice of being treated indefinitely, but you have to know, the more number of therapies you take, the more the side-effects are. Also know that many women have lived fruitful lives while taking the treatment for the metastatic disease. It is hard to take decisions when your life is at stake, but it is also necessary that you do it. There is research going on for prolonging lives of people who have this disease, and that research will surely help you.