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Old 06-09-2006, 03:29 AM   #5
R.B.
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 1,843
Is chemo necessary for breast cancer patients?

Another article same thread


RB

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll...606090357/1040


ABSTRACT


Doctors who treat women with breast cancer are glimpsing the possibility of a vastly different future. After years of adding more and more to the regimen -- more drugs, shorter intervals between chemotherapy sessions, higher doses, longer periods of taking harsh drugs -- they are now wondering whether many women could skip chemotherapy.

If the new ideas are validated by large studies, like two that are just beginning, the treatment of breast cancer would markedly change. Today, national guidelines call for giving chemotherapy to nearly every one of the 200,000 women whose illness is diagnosed as breast cancer each year. In the new approach, chemotherapy would be mostly for the 30 percent of women whose cancers are not fueled by estrogen.
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