Help needed regarding Radiation therapy - Breast Cancer India

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Help needed regarding Radiation therapy

anshul_15 profile image
5 Replies

Dear all,

My mother had undergone Right BCS with oncoplasty (J-Mammoplasty) + Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in one hospital.

Then she switched hospital for chemotherapy, where she successfully completed her chemotherapy. Now she has to undergo radiation therapy.

Should the radiation therapy be taken in the same hospital in which chemotherapy was taken (as it is convenient to her) or should she has to go back to the hospital in which surgery was conducted ?

Prior to surgery, a CT scan was conducted by the radiation department at the hospital in which surgery was conducted.

Is there any role of surgeon who had performed BCS in guiding radiation therapy as he knows better of the place (site) at which tumor or lymph nodes were present ?

One more thing I wanted to ask:

Do the effects of radiation therapy become less significant if it is taken 6 months after surgery ? (given adjuvant chemotherapy was started after BCS surgery)

Or the radiation therapy should sequentially follow adjuvant chemotherapy – chemotherapy may last even more than 6 months (time duration calculated from the date of surgery) ?

Thank you

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roxboxfox profile image
roxboxfoxRadiationOncologist

Ideally you can have Radiotherapy where you like. If you can afford you can have it in US or UK or Australia, of course you should have rough idea which centre are excellent and which centres are good.

Your surgeon of course is there to help and guide you and should be able to guide or give options to u.

Effect and efficacy of Radiotherapy remains even when it's given 6 months post BCS, provided adjuvant chemotherapy was given during this time.

Adjuvant Radiotherapy most often falls sequentially after completion of Adjuvant RT, with perhaps a gap of 3-4 or a bit longer if patient has loads of side effects from chemo.

You are essentially yielding the benefit of a systemic treatment first and then obtaining the benefit from a locoregional treatment.

After that in case you are Hormone positive, Hormone Therapy is offered and taken for 5 yrs or longer as per the case.

MandeepMarkandey profile image
MandeepMarkandey in reply to roxboxfox

Absolutely agree, as long as you have a good radiologist and well equipped lab, hospital doesn't matter so much. It need not be one where surgery was done or chemotherapy was done.

Do not know whether it is advisable to wait 6 months or not, my mother underwent radiation about 6 weeks after surgery. Chemo-Surgery-radiotherapy was my mom'said treatment course.

Only thing I can advise is makeasy sure temperature at home stays cool.

roxboxfox profile image
roxboxfoxRadiationOncologist in reply to MandeepMarkandey

Mandeep no one is waiting for 6 months here...

Chemotherapy as a therapeutic option has been given here.

One should not combine Chemo and Radiotherapy together and they should have them one after the other ( sequentially).

There is very high toxicity and worse outcome as inadvertently when we did a trial in Bristol, UK there were patients who could nt complete chemo and also had Treatment interruption in Radiotherapy.

Hence it should be one after the other.

It would be perhaps intersting to know what chemo was used Anshul and why it took so long.

Perhaps understanding the timeline may illustrate what really happened..

anuppayyanadaan profile image
anuppayyanadaan in reply to MandeepMarkandey

In my wife's case the medical oncologist was against postponing radiation for one month. I had specifically asked the doctor and he said no.

I personally feel you choose your centre for radiation taking into consideration how well equipped the hospital is and cost and convenience.

Anup

anshul_15 profile image
anshul_15

I got a little busy during the week... so cudn't reply.

My mother suffered from Bilateral pyelonephritis along with septicaemia after BCS surgery, during which she remained hospitalized for about a month and hence chemotherapy got a little delayed.

After 2 months of surgery chemotherapy was started with weekly paclitaxel plus trastuzumab (4 cycles of paclitaxel divided weekly).

She was not given any anthracyclins or any platinum agent.

Now she has to undergo radiotherapy.

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