Treatments for Breast Cancer
The treatment of breast cancer is complex and carefully designed to fit your particular circumstances. All breast cancers are different and each case requires its own approach. The three main approaches used to treat breast cancer include:
The specific type of treatment selected for you depends on many factors. It is possible that you may receive more than one type of treatment for your cancer.
The BIDMC Difference
The BreastCare Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center offers you and your family a number of significant treatment benefits, including:
- Expert evaluation with world-class pathologists whose diagnostic findings help guide treatment, and radiologists, skilled at interpreting image results
- Rapid access to our interdisciplinary team of breast specialists
- Surgical expertise, including innovative techniques for breast reconstruction
- Promising new treatments combining hormonal (blocking estrogen that can fuel certain breast cancers) and biological (harnessing the body’s own immune system to fight cancer) therapies
- Care pathway to ensure quality
- Take Sail, our survivorship program to improve your personal experience of living with, through and beyond breast cancer
Approaches to Treating Breast Cancer
The first treatment for your breast cancer is your best shot at securing a long and healthy life. Treating your breast cancer aggressively now will reduce your risk of recurrence.
Breast cancer is treated in two ways: locally, in the breast, or systemically, which means treating the rest of the body.
Locally
Local treatment can include either a wide excision (lumpectomy) with radiation, or a mastectomy (breast removal). Wide excision with radiation is called breast-conserving therapy. Sometimes local treatment requires both mastectomy and radiation. Learn more »
Systemically
Systemic treatment can include chemotherapy or hormone (endocrine) therapy to treat any cancer cells that may have escaped the primary breast tumor and traveled to other locations in the body. Sometimes, isolated cancer cells may have left the breast. There is no current way to know if this has occurred but cancers with certain characteristics are considered at higher risk of this happening. Often, in these situations, doctors will recommend chemotherapy and/or endocrine therapy.
Developing Your Treatment Plan
Your team of health care professionals in the BreastCare Center will develop your treatment plan: your surgeon, your medical oncologist, and your radiation oncologist. Our recommendations will be based on a number of factors, including the size of your tumor, its pathological features, the number of lymph nodes that may be involved, and your overall health.
At your first visit, your surgeon will examine you, review your records, and may consult with radiology and pathology about your case as needed. Your doctor may recommend additional studies such as x-rays, bone scans, blood tests, or other types of testing at the time of your initial consultation.
Our goal is to save your life while exposing you to as few risks and side effects as possible.
Our approach features:
- True multidisciplinary evaluation, with a team of experts working closely together to design a plan of care that is best for you and your family
- Shared decision-making with you as the central part of a very sizeable, knowledgeable and compassionate team dedicated to improving your health and quality of life
- Access to state-of-the-art treatments and services tailored especially for you
- Long-term follow-up care and continuing interest in your well-being
