Treatment of breast cancer
Written by:The doctor. Gonzalo Galofré Pujol is a general surgeon and belongs to Top Doctors, the select circle of top-level doctors in Spain. As an expert in breast cancer, he will explain the details of his detection and treatment.
What is it and what is the incidence of breast cancer?
Breast cancer is a malignant tumor that originates in the breast, in the breast. Initially the tumor is located in the breast and the natural history is the growth of this tumor, the possibility of disseminating and affecting the lymph nodes of the axilla and later, if we did not do any treatment this tumor would reach a distant spread that would be metastasis. The incidence of breast cancer is very high, after breast cancer breast cancer is the most frequent in women and in fact is the number one cause of death in women between 50 and 60 years. In general, the incidence is 10 to 12%, which means that 1 in 10 women, if they live to be 80 years old, will develop breast cancer.
What signs can alert of the presence of this enfreedom?
The signs that should alert us are fundamentally the appearance of a tumor, a lump in the chest. Any bulge that appears on a woman's breast should be studied because any bulge in a woman's breast can be a breast cancer, especially if these lumps are lumps that do not hurt, are lumps that have recently appeared and especially if they are accompanied by a retraction or an alteration of the shape of the skin or nipple, when we see that a nipple sinks, goes inside, or that the skin sinks a little, that should alert us that we can have a cancer of breast. Most breast cancers are going to be diagnosed by screening, prevention, mammography, ultrasound and physical examination on an annual basis and in this way we will discover small tumors that have not yet shown warning signs and that have a high cure rate.
Once the treatment is done, how long does it take to consider that the woman is cured?
In the treatment of breast cancer, several professionals intervene, surgeons intervene for the exeresis of the primary tumor and the lymph nodes, the radiotherapist intervenes in case radiotherapy is necessary, and the oncologists also intervene to indicate a hormonal, chemotherapy and sometimes of monoclonal antibodies. In general, the treatment lasts 8-10 months after the diagnosis of breast cancer and up to 5 years if the hormones are indicated. It is then, from the fifth year, when we consider that the woman is cured of her breast cancer, even though in this particular type of cancer, as in some other, recurrence may appear 10, 12 and up to 20 years later of the initial diagnosis.
