A new study found that radiotherapy does have much impact on breast cancer survival. The study paves the way for further changes in breast cancer practice.
According to the American Cancer Society, radiation therapy (radiotherapy) is a treatment that uses high-energy rays to destroy cancer cells. It is often used by breast cancer patients to reduce the chance of recurrence of the lymph nodes. It is also recommended after a mastectomy procedure of those who had cancer as big as 5 cm.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh led by Prof. Ian Kunkler, who is also consultant in Clinical Oncology, found that radiotherapy for low-risk breast cancer patients who are 65 years old and above has minimal impact on the recurrence with no apparent survival impact.
Their study showed that in a five year period, the local recurrence had low levels for both who received radiotherapy and those who did not, with 1.3 percent with radiation and 4.1 percent without it.
The researchers randomly picked women with an average age of 70 based on the size of their breast cancer together with the adjuvant endocrine therapy.
The population sample is considered a representative of as much as 70 percent of breast cancer infected women in the older population, 65 years old and above. "So I think the implications of this study will have broad generalizability to a large and growing number of patients," said Dr. Kunkler to MedPage Today.
The general rate of survival for both groups during the five-year test was 94 percent. However, there is a limitation to the findings of the study. Those women who had higher estrogen receptor or ER status are better to undergo the radiotherapy. This is because the small group, 117 women out of the 1,326 who were sampled, showed low levels of ER and seemed to have aggressive cancer cases, explained Dr. Kunkler.
He further said, "Therefore, I think it is a matter of discussion between the patient and the physician as to whether that very modest benefit is worth the potential risks of complication of radiotherapy and the burden of undergoing treatment. Older patients find radiation therapy very burdensome."
As conference’s co-chair Dr. C. Kent Osborne has put it, "When I was in my training 40 years ago, we were in the era of more is better ... more surgery, more radiation, more chemotherapy. It is turning out as we've evolved over the last 3 decades, that is not the case. We are now in a transition.”
