cancer du sein Treatment

Breast Cancer treatments

If you have breast cancer, your healthcare team will develop a treatment plan just for you. It will be based on your health and specific information about cancer. When your healthcare team decides what treatments you propose for ductal carcinoma or lobular carcinoma, it takes into consideration the following elements:

The stage of cancer
Menopause
The status of cancer hormone receptors
The status of the cancer HER2 receptor
The risk of re-emergence, or recurrence, of cancer (for early stage cancers)
Your overall health
You may be offered one or more of the following treatments for breast cancer.

Surgery
Most women with breast cancer will have surgery. Your healthcare team will provide you with information on the different types of surgery to help you choose the one that best suits you. The types of surgery that are proposed will depend mainly on the following factors:

Tumor size and location
Breast size reached
Spread of cancer to the lymph nodes
Treatments already received for breast cancer
Breast cancer surgery involves conservative breast surgery, mastectomy, and lymph node surgeries.

RadiotherapyDuring external radiotherapy, a device is used to direct radiation through the skin to the tumor and the surrounding tissue.

Radiation therapy is almost always administered after a conservative breast surgery. In some cases, it can be administered after a mastectomy. It is also used to treat breast cancer that has spread to the bones, lungs or brain.

Hormone therapyHormone therapy is often administered to treat breast cancer with positive hormonal receptors. Postmenopausal women receive hormonal medications different from those administered to premenopausal women.

Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is a common treatment for breast cancer. It is often administered after early breast cancer surgery to reduce the risk of disease recurrence. It is also the primary treatment for advanced or metastatic breast cancer.

Chemotherapeutic agents are generally associated with treating breast cancer since it is more effective than administering a single drug.

Targeted treatmentYou can only administer a targeted treatment or associate it with chemotherapy, hormone therapy, or both.

If you can not or do not want to receive cancer treatment
You might want to consider care that aims to make you feel better without treating the cancer itself, perhaps because cancer treatments no longer work, it is no longer likely that they will improve your condition or that their side effects are Difficult to tolerate. Other reasons may explain why you may not or don't want to receive cancer treatment.

Talk to the members of your healthcare team. They can help you choose the care and treatment of advanced cancer.

Followed
Follow-up after treatment is an important component of care for people with cancer. You will need to have regular follow-up visits, especially during the first 5 years after the treatment. These visits allow the care team to monitor your progress and find out how you are recovering from treatment.

Clinical trialsMany women's breast cancer clinical trials are underway in Canada and accept participants. The aim of the clinical trials is to find new methods for the prevention, detection and treatment of cancer. Learn more about clinical trials

Questions to ask about treatmentIn order to make the right decisions for you, ask questions about the treatment to your care team.