When breast cancer returns (I)
posted in Cancer |When breast cancer returns, it can cause symptoms in the same place where he stayed the first time or even elsewhere in the body. Emotionally, relapse of cancer is devastating to the patient.
The fear of many women who have experienced firsthand the terrible experience of having breast cancer or breast, is doubt about whether he will return. Unfortunately, there is the risk of breast cancer returning, but there are treatment options if this were the case.
The risk of breast cancer relapsed or refractory, as it is called, is because a small amount of malignant cells were not destroyed in the initial treatment. It happens that some patients already have small amounts of cancer spread outside the breast, which can not be detected with any of the evidence currently available, although with time they grow to a detectable size and may even be large enough to be felt .
A undetectable areas of cancer outside the breast are called micro metastases, and its presence causes cancer recurrence. When breast cancer returns, it can cause symptoms in the same place where he stayed the first time or even elsewhere in the body. Emotionally, relapse of cancer is devastating to the patient.
If the recurrent cancer is located within or in the immediate area around it, there is talk of local-regional recurrence. If breast cancer returns in the opposite breast at the initial site, is called contra lateral relapse, whereas if it occurs anywhere in the body, it speaks of a systemic recurrence or distant or distal and in this case is the presence of metastatic breast cancer.
Breast cancer may recur almost anywhere in the body, but the most common are: the liver, bones, lungs, brain and skin.
A recurrence is usually treated with systemic chemotherapy, hormone therapy or a combination of therapies. The local-regional relapses in turn, may require surgery, radiation or systemic therapy.
We have seen that breast cancer can return within the first five years after treatment, but one third of relapses occur even after five years.
It is estimated that the average local and regional recurrence is 3 years and the average time for development of a remote recurrent cancer is 2 years.