Faced with metastatic breast cancer, surgery, in addition to chemotherapy or radiotherapy, improves post-cancer survival, especially when performed after treatment.
- Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women
- The metastatic form of this cancer would concern only 6% of cases
- Surgery after chemotherapy or immunotherapy improves survival
Cancer can spread through the body: this is called metastasis. These are cancer cells present in other organs. In the case of breast cancer, the appearance of metastases concerns 6% of cases. To treat them, doctors generally use chemotherapy, hormone therapy and sometimes surgery. Scientists at Penn State University have investigated the effectiveness of surgery in treating these advanced cancers. “The results of previous studies (…) have been called into question because of the small number of participants or because they were not receiving chemotherapy or other systemic treatment“, explains the main author of this research, Kelly Stahl. With her team, she compared the survival rate of people according to different types of treatment.
The benefits of surgery
In Annals of Surgical Oncology, the researchers explain the protocol they followed in this work. They analyzed the cases of nearly 13,000 people with stage IV breast cancer, the most advanced. They classified them according to different criteria: systemic treatment only (chemotherapy, hormone therapy or immunotherapy), systemic treatment and surgery or systemic treatment, surgery and radiotherapy. The research team concludes that patients treated with systemic treatment and surgery live longer than those treated differently.
What does it mean to be HER2 positive?
They were interested in another criterion: the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). This protein is sometimes overexpressed in cancer, which contributes to the increase in the number of cancer cells. Doctors then classify the cancer as HER2 positive. In this study, scientists found that people with this type of cancer responded particularly well to treatment with surgery. “We also found that chemotherapy before surgery offers better results in terms of survival rates for HER2-positive patients.“, adds Kelly Stahl. She specifies that regardless of the HER2 status, surgery is generally more effective when performed after chemotherapy or other targeted treatment.
Some facts about breast cancer
In France, the United States and Europe, breast cancer is the most common in women. In France, nearly 60,000 cases were diagnosed in 2017, according to the Foundation for Medical Research. The mortality rate has been steadily decreasing for several years. Today, 87% of patients survive the disease within five years of diagnosis.
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