Breast Cancer chemotherapy is known as a therapy of brutalizing proportions. Highly toxic drugs are still given in high doses through chemotherapy but there is a difference. Fat coated droplets are released. These droplets must be heated to 102 degrees before the toxins can be released. The breast is gently warmed until the cell killing compounds are released only in the breast. This brutalizing treatment actually becomes relatively pleasant. Each year there are 215,000 cases and 40,000 deaths, but slowly, incrementally, new approaches for combating this cancer in a more humane way are being developed. One of the most important advances is gene profiling. Gene profiling determines what treatments will be effective based on the particular female patient’s genetic profile.
Genomic Health Inc. of Redwood City can assess 21 key genes in a tumor-tissue sample. A score is then developed from zero to 100. To determine the effectiveness of the drug taxmoxifen a score is given to that particular woman with a high score being a determent that taxmoxifen will not do the job alone. The cost is $3,400 which is high but not as high as the costs of chemotherapy.
Taxmoxifen has been the most successful drug to combat breast cancer but is not effective after five years of treatment. Disease free survival can now be extended by three aromatise inhibitors named Femara, Aromasin and Armidex. These are only effective in post menopausal women.
The one weapon with the most promise is one that will literally vaporize the tumor without surgery. Pilot studies are being done at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and Victoria General Hospital in British Columbia. Instead of surgically removing the cancerous breast tumors they are shot with radio frequency waves. This is useful for only small tumors in older women. Inserted in the breast is a radio probe that is guided to the tumor site by ultrasound. The power radio frequency waves are turned on and it literally shrivels and kills these small tumors.
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