Treatment History Timeline
Treatment options are getting better all the time. Hear Dr. Alison Laidely, breast surgeon, talk about the changes in treatment options and what’s available today.
 Advances in breast cancer treatment since the 1970s
Video Transcript:
There have been a lot of advances in breast cancer since the ‘70s where women really traditionally up until the ‘70s had to have very radical disfiguring surgery. And, over the last 30, 40 years through good clinical trials, we’ve been able to minimize surgery, minimize complications and yet have excellent cancer care.
We do more focused surgery on the breast with lumpectomy in properly selected patients. We do focused evaluation of the lymph nodes and the axilla with doing the sentinel node mapping procedure and which is a huge advance in terms of lymph node surgery for patients. And, it just makes sense that we can focus the radiation in the tissue that’s at risk of recurrence by doing partial breast irradiation. And, the ease of delivery of partial breast with a MammoSite catheter just makes it a home run for properly selected patients.
More treatment options available today
Video Transcript:
The message that I really try to portray to women is to not be afraid to acknowledge that there may be something wrong. There are women that do not want to examine their breasts for fear of finding a lump, there are women who do not want to have a mammogram for the fear of finding cancer. And the fear of breast cancer that’s out there is really tremendous.
I want women to know that they should not be afraid, that we have excellent treatments that we can offer her. Most of the time, 75% of the time, a woman does not have to lose her breast. A good portion of the time she can have a more focused surgery such as the lumpectomy, sentinel node procedure and MammoSite radiation therapy. We can get a patient through treatment with the minimal disruption to her life.
Yes, some women need to have chemotherapy for breast cancer, but we have better drugs, better therapeutic regimens that make it less and less toxic. Some women who need to have a mastectomy, we have excellent reconstructive options that will put her back to feeling whole again. And so the whole treatments that we developed, the advances in breast cancer makes this disease less one of death and more one of life and survival and growth and enjoyment of her future.
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