Breast cancer treatments are available worldwide. Most often, stage 1, 2, and 3 breast cancer types are treated with surgery. It is important to know the stage of breast cancer when doing treatments.
Types of drug treatment get by breast cancer patients
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is done for breast cancer patients just like other cancer patients. It is given intravenously which means injecting into veins or by mouth. The drug travels via the bloodstream and reaches cancer cells that spread in the body. Sometimes cancer cells can be spread to the spinal fluid that surrounds the spinal cord and brain. In this stage, chemo is given directly to this area.
All the women having breast cancers are not undergoing chemotherapy. Adjuvant chemo is done to kill any cancer cell that is left behind or has spread but can’t see even through an imaging test. It lowers the risk of breast cancer coming back after therapy. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is done to shrink the tumor. So it can be removed with less extensive surgery. It is used to treat cancers that are too huge to remove by surgery, have many lymph nodes involved with cancer, or are inflammatory breast cancers. Metastatic breast cancer patients also undergo chemo as the main treatment. It is done when cancer spread outside the breast and underarm area to distant organs like the lungs or liver.
Hormone therapy
Hormones like estrogen and progesterone become the reason for some breast cancers. The cancer cells have receptors attached to progesterone and estrogen and help cancer cells to grow. Hormone or endocrine therapy stops these hormones from attaching to receptors. Hormones have the ability to reach cancer cells situated in any part of the part. Hormone therapy is recommended for cancer patients having tumors that are hormone receptor-positive.
Hormone therapy is done after surgery. It reduces the risk of cancer coming back. Several types of hormone therapies are available for breast cancers. Most of them either lower estrogen levels in the body or stop estrogen from helping the growth of breast cancer cells.
Targeted drug therapy
Targeted drug therapy is done with medicines that are directed at proteins in breast cancer cells. So that growth, spreading, and living is weakened. Targeted drugs help to destroy or slow down the growth of cancer cells. Some targeted therapy drugs work in multiple ways to control cancer cells.
Targeted drugs enter the bloodstream and reach all the parts of the body. So they can kill cancer cells that spread to a distant part of the body.
Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy is a treatment that is used to treat some types of breast cancer. During immunotherapy, medicines are used to boost a person’s own immunity system. So the immune system can identify and destroy cancer cells more effectively. It works on specific proteins involved in the immune system to increase the immune response.
To Sum Up
Breast cancer patients should be treated with care. Proper treatments can destroy or avoid the spreading of cancer cells. Once the treatments are introduced, the patient should follow them correctly.
