Breast cancer

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Breast Lump Removal: Illustrated Series	Breast self-exam	Breast self-exam	Breast self-exam
Female breast	Mammary gland	Mastectomy: An Illustrated Introduction	Needle biopsy of the breast
Open biopsy of the breast	Sentinel node biopsy

Cancer - breast; Carcinoma - ductal; Carcinoma - lobular

The choice of initial treatment is based on many factors. For stage I, II, or III cancers, the main considerations are to adequately treat the cancer and prevent a recurrence either at the place of the original tumor (local) or elsewhere in the body (metastatic). For stage IV cancer, the goal is to improve symptoms and prolong survival. However, in most cases, stage IV breast cancer cannot be cured.

• Surgery may consist only of breast lump removal (lumpectomy ), or partial, total, or radical mastectomy, usually with the removal of one or more lymph nodes from the armpit (axilla). Special procedures to find the most likely lymph nodes to which cancer may have spread (sentinel nodes) are often used.
• Radiation therapy can be directed at the tumor, the breast, the chest wall, or other tissues known or suspected to have remaining cancer cells.
• Chemotherapy is often used to kill cancer cells that may still remain in the breast or that may have already spread to other parts of the body.
• Biologicals are an entirely new type of anti-cancer drug. Biologicals can be used alone or with chemotherapy. Trastuzumab (Herceptin) is an example of this class of drugs. It affects how cancer cells function and grow. Some 20 - 25% of breast cancers respond to trastuzumab. Trastuzumab is not chemotherapy, but it may be combined with chemotherapy. Recent studies show that adding trastuzumab to chemotherapy or treating with trastuzumab after chemotherapy helps prevent the cancer from coming back and can make people who had HER2-positive breast cancer live longer.
• Hormonal therapy with tamoxifen is used to block the effects of estrogen that may otherwise help breast cancer cells to survive and grow. Most women with breast cancers which express estrogen or progesterone on their surface benefit from treatment with tamoxifen. A new class of medicines called aromatase inhibitors, such as Aromasin, have been shown to be as good or possibly even better than tamoxifen in women with stage IV breast cancer.