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Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
New Radiation Therapy May Reduce Breast Cancer
Treatment by Weeks
Proton beam therapy was successful with
four days of treatment
October 31, 2006 – National Breast Cancer Awareness
Month ends with good news. A new accelerated approach to radiation
therapy - proton beam therapy – has successfully reduced the traditional
time of treatment from six weeks or more to less than a week for women
with early-stage breast cancer, according to a new study released today
in the International Journal for Radiation Oncology-Biology-Physics, the
official journal of ASTRO.
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Health & Medicine |
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According to the American Cancer Society, more than
213,000 women will learn they have breast cancer this year. Breast
cancer can be detected through a routine mammogram; often before the
woman herself can detect a lump in her own breast. Women who are found
to have an abnormal mammogram will have a biopsy to test for the
presence of cancer cells.
If cancer cells are detected, most women will
undergo a lumpectomy and some additional treatment that may include
hormone therapy, radiation therapy or chemotherapy or a combination of
the three.
With traditional radiation therapy, patients can
expect daily radiation treatments for a period of 6 to 6 1/2 weeks.
Doctors in this study, however, wanted to examine the use of an emerging
new technology, proton beam therapy, in an accelerated regimen to
determine how well this treatment would be tolerated.
This approach to breast cancer treatment would
essentially shorten the course of treatment to less than one week while
also delivering radiation to only a portion of the breast, thereby
sparing the surrounding healthy tissue and organs.
This study was conducted at the Francis H. Burr
Proton Therapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston with
20 female participants. The women in the study were being treated for
Stage I breast cancer and received proton beam partial breast
irradiation twice a day for four days.
There were no given limitations on the type of
additional treatment options available for participants. Consequently,
patients were allowed to be treated with hormone therapy and
chemotherapy at the discretion of their treating oncologists. The
majority of the women in this study received hormonal therapy and a few
of the patients received chemotherapy.
Patients were then evaluated at different stages of
follow-up, at 3 to 4 weeks, 6 to 8 weeks, 6 months and every 6 months
after that. Patients were required to undergo annual mammograms after
the treatment period and the patients were asked to grade their cosmetic
outcome, or their breast's aesthetic appearance.
Early side effects from radiation therapy can
include skin irritation at the site of the radiation beam, skin
discoloration or thickening of the skin; accelerating the amount of
radiation during treatment could increase the instance of side effects.
Patients judged their own breasts under the
criteria given to them and the doctors who supervised this study in turn
graded the condition of the participants' breasts as well. Patients were
also asked to describe their overall satisfaction with the accelerated
proton beam partial breast irradiation.
The results showed that all 20 women were found
without any evidence of recurrent disease.
The initial response to the cosmetic appearance of
the patients' breasts, however, was not ideal. Both patients and doctors
reported fair to poor cosmesis, but the appearance of the patients'
breasts substantially improved in most patients by the 6 month
follow-up.
According to the study, 95 percent of patients
reported total satisfaction with the proton treatments at their latest
follow-up visit.
"This study represents a crucial first step in
identifying potential roles for proton beam therapy in the care of
patients with breast cancer," said Alphonse G. Taghian, M.D., Ph.D.,
senior author of the study. Kevin R. Kozak, M.D., lead author of the
study, added,
"We hope our team and others will build on these
results to ensure breast cancer patients will maximally benefit from the
recent, and dramatic, technological advances in our field." Drs. Taghian
and Kozak are radiation oncologists at Massachusetts General Hospital in
Boston.
Editor's Notes:
For more information on breast cancer treatment
options, please visit
www.rtanswers.org.
ASTRO is the largest radiation oncology society in
the world, with more than 8,500 members who specialize in treating
patients with radiation therapies. As the leading organization in
radiation oncology, biology and physics, the Society is dedicated to the
advancement of the practice of radiation oncology by promoting
excellence in patient care, providing opportunities for educational and
professional development, promoting research and disseminating research
results and representing radiation oncology in a rapidly evolving
socioeconomic healthcare environment.
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