After a breast cancer tumor is removed (lumpectomy), radiation therapy is used to help keep the cancer from coming back in your breast (breast cancer local recurrence). The goal is to kill any cancer cells that remain, so that these cells cannot reproduce.
How Does Radiation Therapy Work?
High-energy beams of radiation are focused on the breast. This energy disrupts the growth of cells. Cancer cells are especially vulnerable to radiation. Unlike normal, healthy cells, cancer cells can’t repair themselves, which helps keep the cancer from coming back. For more information about how radiation therapy works, please click on the video link of Dr. Louis Munoz below.
Dr. Louis Munoz, radiation oncologist, talks about radiation therapy.
Video Transcript:
Radiation therapy uses X-rays to kill tumor cells. Unfortunately, with external-beam therapy, the radiation therapy, the X-rays have to go through normal tissue to get to the volume at risk. So it does cause some potential damage to the normal tissue.
Video Transcript:
When you look at how does the tumor really behave, do you really need to treat all of that normal tissue? When you look at breast cancer, the area of greatest risk of recurrence is where the tumor started. So if you can adequately confine your treatment to that area, you can achieve the same tumor control, the same tumor cell kill but spare all that normal tissue any exposure to the radiation.
Video Transcript:
This is important because when you look at comparative treatment approaches, conventional breast radiation takes anywhere from six to seven weeks of treatment. That can be a barrier to patients and access to care. The MammoSite delivery system is done with five days with a BID or twice a day treatment option. So certainly the time is compressed initially affecting access and I would suggest quality of life. But even more importantly, the data is maturing that whole breast radiation may not and likely not needed for patients who present with early favorable disease. Also, it can allow the treatment to be done and the patients then can access a systemic chemotherapy in a reasonable timeframe as well.
How radiation works