Breast Cancer And Its Treatments.

Lawrence Johnson Biology Essay

Breast Cancer And Its Treatments

Breast cancer is a disease that plagues many of the world’s women. The lifetime risk of getting it is 1 in 9 and over 39,000 people are diagnosed with it each year, of which 12,800 women on average each year die from the disease in the UK alone. Despite advances in scientific knowledge Breast cancer still makes up for a quarter of all cancers.

In the following essay I will identify and analyse the way in which cancer attacks the breast and the effectiveness of the range of treatments for it.

Although the exact cause for breast cancer remains uncertain, scientists have been able to determine the factors that determine who is most likely to contract it.

These are; women who have a family history of breast cancer (hereditary), women who have children in their later years, post thirties, Women who began menstruating early (before age 12) or reached menopause after the age of 50, excessively high alcohol consumption and women with obesity and high fat diets. However it is not just women who can get breast cancer in fact, 30% of people who get the disease are men.

The most common type of breast cancer is ductal carcinoma; this begins in the lining of the ducts when cells there become cancerous. Breast Cancer beginning in this region makes up about 80% of all cases. This is shown in the diagram below.

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When a group of cells within these lobes or tissue become cancerous they start to multiply in an uncontrolled way. After a period of time they will form a lump or swelling which is called the primary cancer. When this happens in the breast then the result is a primary breast cancer. If untreated then this mass of cancerous tissue will continue to grow as the cancer cells continue to multiply and eventually it will begin to spread. As the primary cancer increases in size it will invade into and destroy the normal breast tissue immediately surrounding it. Sometimes this can spread via the blood stream. This happens when tiny clumps of cells break off from the primary breast cancer entering the surrounding blood vessels and are then carried to other parts of the body, often quite distant from the primary cancer. This is known as metastasis. If this happens then none of the treatments I will mention later can help the patient, the cancer cannot be removed as it has spread to too many places. That is why it is extremely important to catch breast cancer as early as possible.

Various options for breast cancer are available (like all cancers). But the type of treatment available depends largely on the stage the disease is in. So the chance of successful treatment increases with early detection of the disease.

I will now go on to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each method available at the moment for treating breast cancer.

Surgical treatments are widely used to eradicate breast cancer. There are several different ways I which this is done.

One method of surgery is Lumpectomy; this is where the lump or tumour is removed, as well as the surrounding tissue if this is also cancerous.

Another surgical option is Partial Mastectomy; this is where the cancer tissue is removed along with a portion of the surrounding breast tissue and the lining over the chest muscle below the tumour. Some lymph nodes under the arm may be removed and radiation therapy could follow.

A more serious option is Total mastectomy; this involves the removal of the entire breast, but the under laying tissue is left intact. As you can imagine this is only done when cancer has spread quite a lot and surgeons try to avoid this method as it causes major disfiguration. This is shown in the diagram below.

As you can imagine there are many possible implications following surgical treatment for breast cancer. General implications are; Temporary swelling and tenderness (but this is common with any surgery), Hardness from scar tissue at the surgical site (which can sometimes be quite large) and possible wound infection.

A more serious implication can be serious breast disfiguration, which can be emotionally damaging for the patient and is expensive to disguise with plastic surgery. Also, often surgical treatments have to be followed up with non-surgical treatments that I will discuss next; these can often have more intense side effects.

Other treatments are available for the treatment of breast cancer that doesn’t involve surgery. These are the likes of;

Radiation Therapy, this is where X-rays are used to kill or shrink the site of the tumour. The radiation may also be administered by a machine, such as a linear accelerator or cobalt apparatus, or from a radioactive source implanted within the diseased area. External beam radiation therapy uses radiation from outside the body to focus on the cancer and is, therefore, not the primary treatment for cancer that may have spread.

Chemotherapy Is the use of drugs administered to the mouth or via injection to kill the cancer cells. The drugs enter the blood stream and can therefore reach areas of the body where the cancer may have spread.

Hormone Therapy, This treatment is not available for all types of breast cancer. Some types of Breast Cancer have receptors that are affected by different hormones. In these cases, hormone replacement, hormone alteration, or removal of certain hormone producing organs (i.e., ovaries) can be a treatment option.

These non-surgical treatments also have some side effects that can sometimes be a lot more serious than surgical side effects.

Radiotherapy can cause; fatigue, swelling, skin changes, and sometimes changes in breast size.

Chemotherapy causes; Nausea and vomiting, infertility, loss of appetite, loss of hair, mouth sores and an increased susceptibility to infection.

As you can see the side effects for chemotherapy are quite severe and can cause a person a lot of discontent.

Hormone therapy treatment has no distinct side effects, as there is no fixed hormone used, this means no official side effects can be given.

Despite these possible implications in the US last year 1.6 million people survived breast cancer.

With scientific advancements all time, scientists have many ideas in clinical trial for the treatment of breast cancer. Some of which are proving to be very promising.

One method that is being tested in America is Laser Therapy. Laser therapy destroys these cells by using a laser beam, which is pointed at them by a probe.

Another method is Cryotherapy, it destroys the cells by freezing them, again using a small probe.

Both of these methods are already used to destroy other non-malignant cells, but scientists are saying that it could possibly be used to treat cancer cells. It would be very beneficial if it could, as it is a very quick treatment supposedly with very few side effects.

In conclusion, Breast cancer treatments available at the moment are vast in their variety and huge improvements have been made over the last 50 years. However, there are still many people that die from the disease each year. So there is stillroom for improvements in testing methods and treatment methods. Scientist at the moment are working hard to make advancements and I do believe that in the next 50 years may be we will have a cure and will be able to slash statistics that daunt many women all over the country.