GLASGOW — Nearly 200,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, according to the National Cancer Institute, and one in eight women will be diagnosed with the disease in their lifetimes.
But thanks to advances in treatment options and greater awareness for the need of early detection, more women are finding their cancers sooner.
According to Dr. W. Craig Tyree, radiation oncologist with Barren River Regional Cancer Center, early detection is making a difference.
“We’re seeing more and more early-stage breast cancer now than we did in the past when you compare the practice now to seven years ago, when we first opened,” Tyree said. “At that time, we were still seeing a lot of people who were neglecting areas that they saw or felt. Also, people weren’t getting mammograms on a regular basis and now days, although there’s still an occasional patient that we’ll see that may have not gotten regular mammograms or missed something on exam.
Tyree said the majority of women now know to get annual checks and do self-exams.
“Most people are getting their annual mammograms and sort of going by the guidelines and so therefore we’re picking up most of these cancers very early,” he said.
Because of that, where radical mastectomy used to be the norm for treatment, now lumpectomy with radiation is used most often.
“Breast cancer is probably the most widely studied cancer worldwide, not only in the U.S.,” Tyree said.
“As far as new concepts, new treatment options, there’s just a tremendous number of them both in the systemic therapy, chemo-therapy options, and even then the radiation therapy field. There’s a lot of techniques and things that we can do now to treat patients that allows us to deliver a more even dose across the breast tissue, decreasing skin reactions, decreasing toxicity,” he said.
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Early detection is improving breast cancer survival rates
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