Leading breast cancer experts in the US are meeting this week in Texas to present studies that could change the way breast cancer is treated in that country.
Doctors are considering what works and what doesn't, and this means that tens of thousands of women could avoid exhausting treatments that do not actually improve their survival.
New research presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium examined hundreds of elderly patients treated with or without radiation and found no differences in overall survival and very small differences in recurrence rates after 5 years.
Women who may be able to skip radiation are over 65 years old and have low-grade, hormone-driven breast cancer.
Another study found that surgery may not be necessary for women with advanced breast cancer. Doctors in India studied women with breast cancer whose widespread tumors had shrunk with initial chemotherapy.
Half had a mastectomy or lumpectomy, half did not. Survival was the same in both groups, suggesting that these women can spare themselves the terrible experience of having their breast cut off.
"This type of study opens the door to thinking about identifying different subgroups of people who have really good prognoses for the disease and who can be spared certain treatments," says Dr. Freya Schnabel of NYU Langone Medical Center.
Other recent research concludes that vigorous exercise may offer some protection against aggressive breast cancers.
Women who exercised for three or more hours per week over a long period of time had a 47 percent reduction in the risk of developing these more aggressive types of breast cancer," said Dr. Schnabel.
These women exercised by brisk walking, playing tennis, or doing aerobics.
Studying each specific case at Biosalud, and following the line of research described above, we believe that certain lifestyle habits (such as physical exercise), combined with conventional treatments followed by the patient, can help maximize the chances of overcoming a situation as serious as cancer.
We combine complementary nutritional, immunogenetic, immunoactivating, oxygenating, and psychoemotional cancer treatments, using techniques specific to biological medicine.
Before that, an early diagnosis and causal diagnosis of cancer can be made, specifically searching for the cause that has generated the cancerous process, an area that many specialized units overlook.
