Cancer, Cancer Treatment

By Sandy Powers
It was the summer of 2005 when my diagnostic mammogram revealed a growth in the back of my breast. The biopsy confirmed it was cancer. My best option was to have a mastectomy. The day before surgery, my surgeon called to tell me my pre-opt tests came back.
“Your liver enzymes are seriously elevated,” he said.
“What are liver enzymes?” I asked.
“Liver enzymes let us know how healthy the liver is,” he explained. “Your enzymes are 3 times higher than normal. Surgery is on hold until we run some tests.”
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Flattening or indentation of the skin over your breast can be a sign of breast cancer. If it is, you shouldnt worry much as breast cancer is quite treatable. You should make provision on how to receive medical help instead of panicking around. Once you are diagnosed with breast cancer, the next thing you want to do is start an immediate treatment for the cancer. You should ask your doctor for available treatment options and what is involved in each before taking it up. With proper treatment chances are your breast cancer can be treated. And that’s a very high probability because more and more women are now surviving breast cancer, than was the case in the past.
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After following the progress of 32,269 post-menopausal women for 11 years scientists found that vigorous exercise can reduce the risk of breast cancer by almost a third. It seems that a sedentary lifestyle can be a risk factor for the disease even among the women who are not overweight. Nevertheless activities such as scrubbing floors chopping wood, digging, fast jogging, tennis, bicycling or dancing are important in order to prevent the disease.

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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Rather than protecting against all breast cancers, high levels of soy food consumption appears to specifically reduce the risk of estrogen receptor (ER)-positive tumors and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative tumors, Japanese researchers report in the International Journal of Cancer.

Dr. Takeshi Suzuki, at Aichi Cancer Center Research Institute in Nagoya, and associates conducted a study of 678 women with breast cancer and 3,390 controls matched by age and menopausal status with no history of cancer.

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That’s a tricky question and, ultimately, each woman needs to make that decision with her doctor. But there are some advantages to having chemotherapy first.

It may be a good option “in women who have a tumor that is too big in relation to the breast size for conservative surgery[lumpectomy] but who want to have conservative surgery,” said Dr. Eric Winer, director of breast cancer oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In these cases, chemotherapy can often shrink a tumor enough to allow breast-conserving surgery. Women who get such surgery typically get radiation afterward to prevent local and regional recurrence.

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WEDNESDAY, Oct. 29 — Hot flashes, night sweats and joint symptoms in breast cancer patients getting endocrine treatment are signs of estrogen depletion or blockage and may point to successful treatment, British researchers report.

They compared women who reported these symptoms and those who didn’t mention such symptoms at their first follow-up visit during a trial assessing tamoxifen or anastrozole for adjuvant therapy of postmenopausal breast cancer.

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Peregrine Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has announced that updated preliminary data from the first stage of its Phase II trial evaluating bavituximab in combination with docetaxel showed that 10 of 14 (71%) evaluable breast cancer patients achieved an objective tumor response according to RECIST criteria.

The company also reported that patient screening has begun in the second stage of this trial, which will enroll 31 patients.

“Early data from the first stage of this bavituximab Phase II cancer study had already exceeded our expectations, so the positive updated results reported today are especially encouraging as we proceed with patient enrollment in the second stage of the trial,” said Steven W. King, president and CEO of Peregrine. “We look forward to reporting more results from this study and a second ongoing Phase II breast cancer trial as we continue to learn more about bavituximab’s potential in this important, hard-to-treat disease.”

Breast cancer is a cancer of both men and women. But in case of men, it is less common than women. Cancer grows in the cells of the breast and it develops uncontrollably and spreads to other parts of the body. If cancer occurs in cells of breast, one will feel a lump at a self-examination test. In the earlier stage, it is difficult to feel the lump and so in the intitial stage no symptoms occur. A mammogram can detect the primary symptoms of breast cancer by detecting lump of the cancer cells and differentiate the malignant tumors from benign breast conditions. Breast cancer is a metastatic disease as it can spread beyond the original organ. Bone, liver, lung and brain are the more common sites of metastasis and different symptoms occur in this stage.
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Thousands of people turned out for the walk to promote breast cancer awareness and to provide hope and help to people facing the disease.

The Sunday walk was the second annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk, held at WhiteMemorialConservationCenter. The event was intended to help raise money for breast cancer research, education and patient service programs in Connecticut. Organizers said they hoped to raise more than $85,000 from the Litchfield walk alone.

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Coffee isn?t harmful to your health, a new study confirms that theory. Is it true that long term, regular coffee consumption may speed the progression of aggressive forms of breast cancer? The findings of a new study published in the Oct. Issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine suggest caffeine ?does not appear to be associated with overall risk of breast cancer.?

For the study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, study co-author Dr. Shumin M. Zhang, from the division of preventive medicine, in the department of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues from Tokyo Women?s Medical University in Japan examined the diets of a pool of almost 39,000 women over the age of 45 over a period of ten years. The participants were asked to provide details of their diet, including their coffee habits. 1,188 of the 38,432 study participants developed invasive breast cancer over 10 years of follow-up.

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