Help!!

[Nitesh_7]

My aunt is suffering from breast cancer stage 2, What are the effective treatments ? Also ,what is the survival chances of her?

[wobblybee Administrator Pioneer]

🤔 Treating stage II breast cancer

These breast cancers are larger than stage I cancers and/or have spread to a few nearby lymph nodes.

Local therapy (surgery and radiation therapy)

Stage II cancers are treated with either breast-conserving surgery (BCS; sometimes called lumpectomy or partial mastectomy) or mastectomy. The nearby lymph nodes will also be checked, either with a sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) or an axillary lymph node dissection (ALND).

Women who have BCS are treated with radiation therapy after surgery. Women who have a mastectomy are typically treated with radiation if the cancer is found in the lymph nodes. Some patients who have a SLNB that shows cancer in a few lymph nodes may not have the rest of their lymph nodes removed to check for more cancer. In these patients, radiation may be discussed as a treatment option after mastectomy.

If you were initially diagnosed with stage II breast cancer and were given treatment such as chemotherapy or hormone therapy before surgery, radiation therapy might be recommended if cancer is found in the lymph nodes at the time of the mastectomy. A doctor who specializes in radiation, called a radiation oncologist, may review your case to discuss whether radiation would be helpful to you.

If chemotherapy is also needed after surgery, the radiation is delayed until the chemo is done.

In some cases, breast reconstruction can be done during the surgery to remove the cancer. But if you will need radiation after surgery, it is better to wait to get reconstruction until after the radiation is complete.

Neoadjuvant and adjuvant systemic therapy (chemo and other drugs)

Systemic therapy is recommended for some women with stage II breast cancer. Some systemic therapies are given before surgery (neoadjuvant therapy), and others are given after surgery (adjuvant therapy). Neoadjuvant treatments are often a good option for women with large tumors, because they can shrink the tumor before surgery, possibly enough to make BCS an option. But this doesn’t improve survival more than getting these treatments after surgery. In some cases, systemic therapy will be started before surgery and then continued after surgery.

To help decide which women with stage II hormone receptor-positive, Her2-negative breast cancer will benefit from chemotherapy, a gene panel test such as Oncotype DX may be done on the tumor sample.

The drugs used will depend on the woman’s age, as well as tumor test results, including hormone-receptor status and HER2 status. Treatment may include:

Chemotherapy: Chemo can be given before or after surgery.

HER2 targeted drugs: For people with HER2-positive cancers, some will be treated with adjuvant (after surgery) chemotherapy with trastuzumab with or without pertuzumab for up to 1 year. Many women with HER2-positive cancers will be treated first with trastuzumab (with or without pertuzumab) followed by surgery and then more trastuzumab (with or without pertuzumab) for up to a year. If after neoadjuvant therapy, there is any residual cancer found at the time of surgery, the trastuzumab may be changed to a different drug, called ado-trastuzumab emtansine, which is given every 3 weeks for 13 doses. For people with cancer that is hormone receptor-positive, found in the lymph nodes, and have completed 1 year of trastuzumab, your doctor might also recommend additional treatment with an oral drug called neratinib for 1 year.

Hormone therapy: If the cancer is hormone receptor-positive, hormone therapy (tamoxifen, an aromatase inhibitor, or one followed by the other) is typically used. It can be started before surgery, but because it continues for at least 5 years, it needs to be given after surgery as well.

Copied from cancer.org

Each case is individual. According to the American Cancer Society, the five-year survival rate for stage 2 breast cancer is 93% for women who have completed treatment. By contrast, women with stage 3 cancer have a five-year survival rate of 72%.

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