Dual Treatment Could Prevent Breast Cancer Recurrence
UK researchers have discovered that using both radiation and chemotherapy during the early stages of breast cancer “significantly” reduces the risk that tumors will return, according to a Saturday report from Kate Kelland of Reuters.
In addition, according to Kelland, the researchers claim that this medical one-two punch, officially referred to as synchronous chemoradiation, “could also save lives among people with breast cancer, a disease that currently kills 425,000 women a year worldwide…has limited side effects and does not harm patients’ quality of life, should be considered for use by all breast cancer doctors.”
The findings of the SEquencing of Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy in Adjuvant Breast cancer (SECRAB) study, which was led by University Hospitals Birmingham Trust Consultant Clinical Oncologist Indrajit Fernando, was presented Sunday during the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress in Stockholm, Sweden, according to a European CanCer Organisation (ECCO) press release.
“The results show that synchronous chemoradiation reduces the risk of local cancer recurrence by 35% in women with early breast cancer,” Fernando, who also serves as an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, said in a statement. “After a follow-up of over eight years, only 41 patients in the synchronous chemoradiation group had suffered a recurrence compared with 63 patients in the sequential chemoradiation group.”
The research was conducted at 48 different locations throughout the UK and is said to be the largest study to ever analyze synchronous chemoradiation as a treatment option. Nearly 2,300 women participated in the trial.
Of those participants, 1,146 received sequential chemoradiation, and the remainder received the treatments synchronously. The researchers then looked at each group’s skin reactions, breast and arm symptoms, and overall quality of life.
“Although the results of the main study showed that patients in the synchronous chemoradiation group had a significantly worse skin reaction, only four percent of patients in the synchronous arm had a severe reaction which would have taken several weeks to heal and subsequently affect quality of life. The majority of women had a moderate skin reaction which would have settled in a very short period of time and this had no detrimental effect on their quality of life,” he says.
Kelland reports that after a five-year period, only 2.8% of those who received both treatments at the same time had recurring tumors, compared to 5.1% of those who received radiation and chemotherapy individually.
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