A new therapy using radiation has shown promising results against breast cancer suggests a study that has been outlined at this year's Annual Meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology in Denver. The technique known as accelerated partial breast irradiation makes use of MammoSite balloon brachytherapy to make it convenient for patients needing post-operative radiation therapy at the same time offering safety and good cosmetic results.
Lead author of the study, Dr. Martin Keisch augurs the technique as “an excellent option” for women suffering early stages of breast cancer and unable to go through the standard six-week radiation course owing to time constraints. Dr. Keisch, a radiation oncologist at Florida's Mount Sinai Comprehensive Cancer Center who is familiar with MammoSite brachytherapy, suggests that the balloon insertion in the site where the tumor has been excised is effective in delivering site-specific high doses of radiation through a catheter. He suggests that Brachytherapy is one of the many methods of accelerated partial breast irradiation that helps treat only the area around the tumor rather than the entire breast.
In the study, 43 women having early-stage breast cancer were evaluated after undergoing the new procedure and none suffered any relapse over the following four years, while also benefiting by brachytherapy's ability to treat with little cosmetic damage. Dr. Keisch who hopes to follow the respondents for another 10 years, believes that chemotherapy with aromatase inhibitors is unnecessary for a large proportion of breast cancers, given the new radiation therapy and possibility of drugs like tamoxifen.
Another study by Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center specialist Gary Freedman presents the strong evidence of 471 women with breast cancer undergoing lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy and 5 years of tamoxifen. This study found women free of the disease 5 years later had a small 2.5 percent propensity of cancer relapse when followed up after 10 years. But even this study noted that those benefiting from chemotherapy were basically pre-menopausal with the tumor already in several lymph nodes or suffering other major diseases besides cancer.
But Dr. Martin Keisch's study of the MammoSite Radiation Therapy System that has been in use since 2002, suggests that this form of radiation therapy offers a compelling alternative to traditional radiation, while affording some patients a shorter duration treatment. Besides it also gives women an opportunity to preserve their breasts by opting for lumpectomy rather than mastectomy while getting quicker but almost fool-proof radiation treatment.
The less painful radiation therapy has already proven effective for a 70-year old breast cancer patient and at least another 100,000 American women can possibly benefit every year, should the treatment prove effective on a longer duration and larger scale study, which is likely to involve at least 3,000 women across 150 sites. For now it remains an effective short-term alternative to the more painful and tedious six-week almost daily radiation course.
