by Top Docs of Houston on 05/15/12
Article date: May 2, 2012
By Stacy Simon
A study comparing a kind of brachytherapy to whole breast irradiation (WBI) found that women treated with brachytherapy were more likely to need more breast surgery later. However, the risk was still low. About 4% of the women in the brachytherapy group needed a mastectomy sometime after radiation was complete versus 2% of the women in the WBI group.
Researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center examined the medical records from almost 93,000breast cancer patients who were diagnosed between 2003 and 2007 and had lumpectomy surgery. After the lumpectomy, about 7,000 of the women were treated with brachytherapy and almost 86,000 had WBI. The women treated with brachytherapy were twice as likely (4% vs. 2%) to go on to get a mastectomy of the treated breast – most likely because cancer was found in that breast. There was no difference in survival time between the two groups.
Brachytherapy, also known as internal radiation, is a way to deliver radiation therapy. Instead of aiming radiation beams from outside the body, radioactive seeds or pellets are placed directly into the breast tissue next to the cancer. The kind of brachytherapy in the study, intracavitary brachytherapy, is also the most common way to give brachytherapy to breast cancer patients. It involves putting a source of radiation into the space left from lumpectomy for a short time and then removing it.
The researchers write that brachytherapy has emerged in recent years as an alternative to WBI, which is the standard treatment after lumpectomy. According to the study, as many as 10% of older women are now treated with brachytherapy. Compared with WBI, brachytherapy irradiates less breast tissue and requires a much shorter course of treatment.
This study raises questions about whether irradiating only the area around the cancer will reduce the chances of the cancer coming back as much as giving radiation to the whole breast. More studies comparing the 2 approaches are needed to see if brachytherapy should be used instead of whole breast radiation.
Side effects of WBI can include swelling and heaviness in the breast, sunburn-like skin changes in the treated area, and fatigue. The breast can become smaller and firmer. There is also a risk of painful nerve damage.
Intracavitary brachytherapy can also have side effects, including redness, bruising, breast pain, infection, and a break-down of an area of fat tissue in the breast. As with whole breast radiation, weakness and fracture of the ribs can also occur.
The study was published in the May 2, 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Reviewed by: Members of the ACS Medical Content Staff
ACS News Center stories are provided as a source of cancer-related news and are not intended to be used as press releases. For reprint requests, please contact permissionrequest@cancer.org.
Citation: Association Between Treatment With Brachytherapy vs Whole-Breast Irradiation and Subsequent Mastectomy, Complications, and Survival Among Older Women With Invasive Breast Cancer. Published in the May 2, 2012 issue of theJournal of the American Medical Association (Vol. 307, No. 17). First author: Grace L. Smith, MD, PhD, MPH, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas.
by Top Docs of Houston on 05/15/12
Obesity is a major health problem in itself because being obese can put a person at risk for many different diseases and can trigger a chain of other health problems. One of the major problems that result from carrying extra weight are aches and pains throughout the body. The human body was built only to sustain a certain amount of weight. The frame of the body can healthily handle a normal body mass index. A body with a healthy body mass index will be able to support it’s weight without causing any major problems. When the body mass index gets into the obese category that is when it starts to experience problems that lead to pain in the body, especially spinal pains. Anyone who has experienced major wight gain may be familiar with the stresses the additional weight can put on the body.
The frame of the body can handle certain masses of muscle and fat but when these masses of fat become too heavy they pull on the frame of the body and can pull parts of the body like the spine out of alignment. A back that is not aligned can be very painful and one of the best ways to relieve this pain is to lose the weight so the back falls back into natural alignment. Bodies that are obese and too heavy are also more difficult to move around. The law of gravity makes it so that it is much more difficult to move around a heavier body than a lighter body. The exertion and stress that an overweight body is constantly under while moving around can also cause pains throughout the body and in the back and spine. There is much more stress on a spine that is trying to lift up 50 extra pounds of fat than a spine that is supporting 10 pounds of extra fat. There are many ways to reduce back pain but the facts point to wight loss as the key factor in reducing spinal pain permanently. Though there are remedies that can lessen back pain temporarily, the only way to really make sure that the relief from spinal pain is lasting is to take off the extra weight. Taking off the weight will not only keep the body free of extra stress related pain but it will also reduce the risk for many other health risks associated with obesity.
