Understanding Breast Surgery and Treatment after Surgery for Early-Stage Breast Cancer
(For information about Breast Surgery for DCIS, Stage 0 Breast Cancer, click here)
If you have been diagnosed with early-stage, invasive breast cancer, you are likely feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about your treatment options. It is important to know that you are not alone. Millions of women have been successfully treated for early-stage breast cancer, thanks to medical advances over the last few decades. Usually, the first step is to treat it with surgery to remove the tumor and any cancerous tissue surrounding it. Based on the characteristics of your tumor, your doctor may give you the option of choosing between a lumpectomy and a mastectomy. You should learn all that you can about your individual cancer before deciding on your surgical and treatment plan.
What is right for one woman is often not right for another. You need to learn all that you can about your individual cancer before making your treatment decision.
What is a Lumpectomy?
With a lumpectomy, the surgeon removes only the tumor and some of the normal tissue that surrounds it to help obtain a cancer-free surgical margin. As little of the healthy breast tissue as possible is taken, and the breast usually retains its shape. Lumpectomy can be performed under local, regional, or general anesthesia, and recovery time is usually a matter of days.
What is a Mastectomy?
With mastectomy, the surgeon removes the entire breast and often also the underarm lymph nodes. Mastectomy is performed under general anesthesia, and recovery time is usually a few weeks. During the procedure, the surgeon may place one or several small tubes to drain any fluids that may accumulate for the first several weeks after the surgery. Unlike lumpectomy, radiation therapy is usually not required after mastectomy for early-stage breast cancer.
What Additional Treatment Will I Need
After your surgery, you will most likely recieve one or more kinds of therapies to treat or prevent the return of your breast cancer, including radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, or chemotherapy, Because breast tumors vary widely in their aggressiveness, understanding the biological characteristics of your tumor will help determine what treatment is best for you.
Is chemotherapy right for you?
The Oncotype DX breast cancer test can help you decide.
The more aggressive your cancer appears, the more likely you are to receive chemotherapy along with surgery. If you have early-stage, estrogen-receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer, the Oncotype DX test can help your doctor determine the chances of your individual cancer coming back (recurrence) and if you are likely to benefit from adding chemotherapy to your treatment program.
Genomic Testing with Oncotype DX -- Take Charge of your Cancer Journey
If you have early-stage, estrogen receptor positive (ER+), HER2-negative (HER2-) breast cancer, you should ask your doctor about the Oncotype DX Breast Recurrence Score Test. Performed on a small amount of tumor tissue removed during your surgery, the Oncotype DX test reveals the underlying biology of your cancer by measuring the activity of certain genes in your tumor. According to definitive evidence including the landmark clinical study known as TAILORx, the Oncotype DX test is the only gene test that can determine if you are part of the great majority of patients who may be spared chemotherapy and its well-known side effects, or are among the minority of patients who could receive life-saving benefit from chemotherapy.