What to expect from treatment and ways to cope with side effects.
Posted on: May 20, 2015 11:57AM - edited May 20, 2015 07:46PM by Cheesequake
Cheesequake wrote:
Sites like adjuvantonline, cancermath and predict don't give recurrence/mortality percentages for radiation. How much does radiation improve our chances?
I have Li Fraumeni syndrome, which increases my chances of new cancers by a higher percentage than for others without LFS, but it's unclear by how much. I'm considering skipping rads altogether.
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May 20, 2015 01:57PM - edited May 20, 2015 01:58PM by 09bankr
Saw my Rads onc on Monday. He said rads lowers risk of recurrence by two thirds. Said risk for all women with all types of BC is 20-25% so that means it cuts risk to roughly 7-8%.
May 20, 2015 07:49PM Cheesequake wrote:
Wow, that's a big improvement. That makes it a very difficult decision. Thanks 09bankr.
May 27, 2015 06:51PM Cheesequake wrote:
Just wanted to update this thread with more information in case other people are seeking it out. I found a couple studies with some good info:
Effect of radiotherapy after breast-conserving surgery on 10-year recurrence and 15-year breast cancer death: After breast-conserving surgery, radiotherapy to the conserved breast halves the rate at which the disease recurs and reduces the breast cancer death rate by about a sixth. These proportional benefits vary little between different groups of women. By contrast, the absolute benefits from radiotherapy vary substantially according to the characteristics of the patient and they can be predicted at the time when treatment decisions need to be made.
Effect of radiotherapy after mastectomy and axillary surgery on 10-year recurrence and 20-year breast cancer mortality: After mastectomy and axillary dissection, radiotherapy reduced both recurrence and breast cancer mortality in the women with one to three positive lymph nodes in these trials even when systemic therapy was given. For today's women, who in many countries are at lower risk of recurrence, absolute gains might be smaller but proportional gains might be larger because of more effective radiotherapy.
This second study was boiled down to me by Dr David Gorski as follows: "Post-mastectomy radiation therapy is associated with a decrease in risk of local recurrence over 10 years from 26.8% to 8.1%, whereas in women with node-negative disease the difference is not statistically significant."
May 27, 2015 11:47PM Italychick wrote:
the numbers don't make sense to me. My MO said with surgery only, chances about 70-75%. Adding chemo she said gave me another boost to about 85-90%. So I am having trouble with the radiation increase because that would put me over 100%. I started another forum looking for research on lumpectomy/rads vs. mastectomy.
May 28, 2015 01:23PM Cheesequake wrote:
I was shocked to hear that the risk of local recurrence is 26.8% with a mastectomy, 8.1% with mastectomy and radiation. Really? I thought mastectomy alone has a 5% risk of local recurrence - because there isn't much place left for it to recur!! I'm so confused....
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