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Hi Kristen,
I pulled this off an article, I think the views are fairly consistant. Al
Is radiation therapy necessary if the margins of the removed tissue are negative?
Many studies have reviewed this approach for patients with invasive cancers. Nearly all show the risk of relapse in the breast is much higher than when radiation is not used (20 to 40 percent) than when it is (five to 10 percent). Having breast cancer reappear in this way is a very traumatic event psychologically. Also, patients may need to have a mastectomy to be cured in this situation, so in more cases they may lose the breast than if they had undergone radiation therapy initially. Finally, not everyone who has a recurrence in the breast can be cured. Therefore, radiation therapy after lumpectomy is the standard treatment around the world.
And another recent one from Al, this one talking death rates: so I would assume re-occurance rates are even higher??.........
Radiation improves breast cancer survival rate: study
Last Updated Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:20:36 EST
CBC News
MONTREAL - Women at high risk of recurring breast cancer who receive radiation in addition to a mastectomy and chemotherapy have better survival rates, say Canadian researchers.
The discovery comes from an analysis of 20 years of data from 318 British Columbia premenopausal breast cancer patients.
It shows that those with radiation of both their chest wall and the surrounding areas containing lymph nodes had better survival rates with few long-term side-effects, compared to half the women who had chemotherapy alone after surgery.
Women with large tumours and those whose cancer has spread to three or more lymph nodes are considered high risk.
The study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the National Cancer Institute. It found that when radiation was used after surgery and chemotherapy, there was a 32 per cent reduction in the death rate from breast cancer.
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