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How to Prevent Breast Cancer Recurrence
Around 215,000 women are identified as having breast cancer each year. For many of them, surgical treatment to remove the tumor is just the initial step in the battle against the disease, generally followed by radiation or chemotherapy. Afterward, these women might need to decide with their medical doctor whether to have adjuvant therapy which is the treatment to help avoid their cancer from recurring. I think you would like to read Cancer Treatment and Tamoxifen - Breast Cancer Treatment too.
Whenever a woman's breast cancer does come back or spreads to other areas of the body, the woman can be at greater risk of dying from the disease. Women whose breast cancer is noticed in the nearby lymph nodes at diagnosis and people who acquire chemotherapy after surgical treatment are believed to be at increased risk for breast cancer recurrence.
Postmenopausal women whose early-stage breast cancer is hormone-sensitive have a new option as their first hormone therapy following surgery. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lately accepted Femara (letrozole tablets) on December 28, 2005 for this form of use. This approval was based on a median of a couple of years of therapy. The study is still ongoing to discover the long-term safety and efficiency of Femara. Already a respected breast cancer treatment, Femara is actually the only medicine in a group called aromatase inhibitors that is recognized for use both right after surgery and after 5 years of tamoxifen. The FDA issued Femara a priority evaluation, a distinction reserved for medications which could possibly provide a significant improvement as compared to products at the moment available on the market.
A panel from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the nation's leading group of oncologists, suggests aromatase inhibitors, including Femara, be part of the ideal adjuvant treatment for this category of women.
"One of the greatest concerns confronted by women who are actually medicated for early breast cancer is that their cancer will come back. With Femara, we certainly have a solution which can help address that worry early on, even in patients who we know encounter the greatest risk of recurrence," said Matthew Ellis, MD, PhD, FRCP, director of the Breast Cancer Program at Washington University in St. Louis.
In a very big clinical analysis of post-surgery breast cancer therapy, scientists compared the potency of Femara and tamoxifen, a different drug prescribed after surgery. An analysis conducted after 26 months demonstrated that Femara decreased the risk of breast cancer coming back by 21% over the reduction offered by tamoxifen. Patients taking Femara also showed a 27 % decrease in the risk of the cancer dispersing to distant areas of the body.
In this study, women at elevated risk of recurrence experienced the greatest benefit from Femara. Femara lowered this risk by 29 % in females whose breast cancer had already metastasize to the lymph nodes at the time of diagnosis and by 30 % in women who had prior chemotherapy. The final results also showed that in these high-risk women, Femara lessened the potential risk of cancer spreading to distant parts of the body by 33 % and 31 %, respectively.
From the research above, we can see that the Femara treatment will not induce any bad effect to the patients. The side effects such as joint pain, weight gain and so on are really scary.
Last but not least, the recurrence of breast cancer can be prevented if the Femara is fully utilized by the doctor. Maybe we just need more time to be confident with this new product.
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