Metastatic breast cancer treatment options
Women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer have several treatment options available to them. A medical team can help make the appropriate decisions about treatment and follow-up care, based on a woman's medical condition and the lifestyle she wants to lead.
Some of the therapies that are available for women with metastatic breast cancer include the following.
Hormonal treatment
Hormonal treatment is considered a systemic therapy, which means the medication travels in the bloodstream to affect or treat cancer cells. It may be used to reduce the growth or spread of breast cancer. If the cancer is found to be of the type that may be sensitive to estrogen, hormonal treatment may be able to keep estrogen from helping the cancer cells to grow and divide.
The presence of estrogen or progesterone receptors (message-carrying proteins that may stimulate tumor growth) in the cancerous tumor is the best way to predict a woman's response to hormonal treatment for breast cancer. If it has not already been done, your doctor can do a test to determine the estrogen and progesterone receptor status of your tumor.
The hormonal treatment you and your doctor decide is right for you will depend on a number of factors, such as whether you are premenopausal or postmenopausal. Hormonal treatment options available for premenopausal women will not be discussed here; please talk to your doctor about these options. Hormonal treatments for postmenopausal women are currently available in pill form or as a monthly intramuscular injection into the buttocks. Ask your physician about these therapies.
A woman may have already received hormonal treatment following her initial diagnosis and treatment. FASLODEX is a hormonal treatment for hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer in postmenopausal women whose breast cancer has returned or progressed following other antiestrogen therapy such as tamoxifen. Click here to see how FASLODEX works.
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Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the use of drugs that target and destroy rapidly dividing cells, including cancer cells. It can be used in metastatic breast cancer to shrink cancerous tumors and is sometimes used if it is believed the breast cancer will not adequately respond to hormonal treatment or other therapy. Like hormonal treatment, chemotherapy is a systemic therapy.
Several types of chemotherapy drugs are available; they may be administered by mouth or directly into the vein (intravenously). Chemotherapy drugs can be used in combinations (combination chemotherapy) or one after another (sequential chemotherapy).
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Biologically targeted therapy
This term covers a range of options that are part of the family of cancer treatments. These systemic therapies fight cancer by targeting specific features of cancer cells. They are often added to chemotherapy. For example, there are specific treatments that target breast cancer cells that make too much of a protein called HER2/neu. This can cause the HER2/neu proteins to stop working, in which case the tumor cells are less able to grow.
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Radiation therapy
Radiation therapy uses penetrating beams of high-energy waves or streams of particles to kill and hinder the growth of cancer cells. In metastatic disease, radiation is most commonly used to treat pain in the bone, metastatic tumors in the brain, breast or chest wall pain, or skin ulcers over the breast tumor. Radiation therapy is referred to as a local therapy because it treats a specific area of the body.
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Surgery
Surgery may be used to remove painful breast tissue or metastases in the brain, spinal column, or lungs. Surgery also permits the removal of tissue for breast cancer diagnosis. Like radiation, surgery is considered a local therapy.
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