Suggest Treatment For Metastatic Breast Cancer
My mother, age 64, started her Breast Cancer treatment in Feb. She had this tumor since 4 years, but only reported it last February.
She was staged T4N1, stage 3B and the tumor had breached the skin when her treatment started. Before the treatment, the tumor was close to 7cm as per Mammography and PET had it measured at 9cm. The PET was done after FNAC which resulted in massive inflammation and swelling, which probably led to an increased size.
She underwent AC+T chemotherapy treatment with standard dosage as per her Body Surface Area of 1.5
After all chemotherapy, the ultrasound measured her tumor close to 1cm, so she had very good response
Her tumor is ER/PR+ 8/8 and Her2Neu-
She had her mastectomy on 8th Aug and doctors took out 21 axilla nodes (Level 1, Level2 and 2 nodes from Level 3), out of which one node was found to have metastatic deposits.
Attached are her reports.
What radiotherapy would you recommend. Can we skip radiotherapy as only one node was found positive and doctors got clear margins
Radiotherapy can not be skipped.
Detailed Answer:
Hello!
Thank you for the query.
As she has lymph nodes metastases after chemotherapy, radiotherapy is more than necessary. Please note that this is after chemotherapy. This means that before the chemotherapy most likely more lymph nodes was affected. As you have mentioned, she has a great chemotherapy response. Same response was in lymph nodes as in the tumor.
And even after the chemotherapy there would be no single cancer cell present, still radiotherapy would be advisable.
Radiotherapy is an old technique (however very effective). So there is no any special methods of the radiation or any advanced techniques. Every radiation is the same. The difference is in the x-rays dosage. And the dosage has to be set individually.
Hope this will help. Feel free to ask further questions.
Regards.