Years ago if a woman was diagnosed with breast cancer it was considered a death sentence and they were basically told to go home say goodbye to their families, make a will, and report back to hospital for pain killers until they died. In the quickly advancing medical world of new treatments and ongoing research more and more women go on to recover and live long full lives after being diagnosed. Modern medicine has had so many marvelous technological breakthroughs that if the cancer is detected early there is no reason why it cannot be treated and cured in most cases. The keywords though are early detection. Breast Self Examinations (BSE), doctors examinations and mammography tests have made early discovery and treatment more common than ever before. This article is meant to give some insight into the treatments available and is only meant to be a short guide, you should discuss all your treatment options more fully with your doctor.

Treatments for breast cancer takes place in various stages. Depending on how far advanced the cancer has progressed is how they determine treatment plans. A TNM staging is used to determine how advanced or at what stage the cancer is in the patient. The treatment process looks at how far the cancer has metastases or spread to other parts of the body.

The most common breast cancer treatment today is still surgery. When surgery is used to remove cancer cells it is referred to as conservative surgery. Conservative surgery is the removal of all cancerous tissues that have invaded the body of a cancer victim and leaving as much of the healthy tissue behind. The surgeon will also take samples of the healthy skin tissue from the area surrounding the cancerous growth removed. This sample is then sent to the laboratory for a reading test to see if it comes back normal and if it does it asserts that the surgeon has successfully taken the malignancy out. Although surgery is probably still the most effective way to treat patients it has its drawback for it can severely scar or disfigure a woman’s body leaving her feeling undesirable and reducing her self ego.

Hormone Therapy is used by doctors when either a small tumor shows signs of being sensitive to the use of hormonal drugs or when the doctor would like to attempt to reduce the size of a cancer before surgery is done on a patient. There are types of hormones that if introduced into the body will attach themselves to breast cancer cells and affect, stop or retard their ability to multiply. Estrogen and progesterone are two hormones found in a woman’s body that promote the growth of some cancer cells so in hormone therapy drugs or surgery may be used to end production of these hormones in the ovaries. Hormone drugs used in treating breast cancer include: Tamoxifen, Fareston, Arimidex, Aromasin, Femara, Zoladez/Lupron, Megace and Halotestin.

Chemotherapy uses very powerful drugs to destroy existing cancers and to retard any future growth of cancerous material in the body. Today doctors use up to fifty different types of drugs in different combinations to find the variation that will work the most efficiently and effectively on each patient. Doctors must study carefully the method of chemotherapy because it is a treatment that also has several drastic side effects and make the patient really sick after the treatments as well as hair loss in some patients. As there are usually a series of treatments sufficient rest times must also be allowed between to give the healthy cells a chance to recuperate.

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