Metastatic Breast Cancer Symptoms
The stage of breast cancer when cancer cells do not remain in the original cancer site and spread out to other parts of the body is called metastatic breast cancer. This is the stage when the cancer is fully advanced. Even if you have been successfully treated for breast cancer, there is a chance that some cancer cells do not die, and later spread out through blood and lymphatic vessels to other body organs. This process is known as metastasis of breast cancer.
Metastatic breast cancer can either recur, that is, the treatment for breast cancer may have completed, but the cancer cells that escaped from being killed make the cancer recur, or may happen during the course of treatment, when the cancer is so aggressive that it spreads out despite of the treatments, or, in some cases when diagnosis is very late, and the cancer has spread out, metastatic might be the very first diagnosis.
Metastasis usually occurs in bones, and organs like lungs and brains. Unfortunately, breast cancer has the highest chance of metastasizing. If you have had breast cancer, and later develop another form of cancer, in all probability, it is breast cancer recurring. The fortunate side of this is that breast cancer is very much treatable. However, if you develop breast cancer again in the breast that was not diseased earlier, it might just be a new cancer.
It is very important to know about metastatic breast cancer because around 30% of women with breast cancer are later diagnosed with metastatic cancer. Metastatic breast cancer is best treatable when no organ, specifically the lungs and brain, develop cancer, or when the cancer cells show traces of estrogen or progesterone hormone receptors, or, when tumors still respond to therapies, or when there have not been many treatments the patient has already availed.
For treatment of metastatic breast cancer, chemotherapy, immune therapy, hormone treatment, radiation therapy, regular mammograms, bone scans, ultrasounds, PET scans, MRIs, CT scans, etc. are adopted. The treatment is extensive, and involves a lot of specialists. The treatments also vary according to their purpose. There are systemic treatments (like anti-estrogen and chemotherapy) that concentrate on curing every part of the body, local treatments (like surgeries on the lines of mastectomy and lumpectomy and radiation therapy) which focus on curing and killing the cancer in specific areas where the cancer has spread to, and treatments which are focused on just relieving the pain of the victim.
Because metastatic breast cancer means cancer spreading to various parts of the body, complete sure is very difficult. There will come a point when you will have to stop undergoing treatment, even when your cancer is not fully cured. You have the choice of being treated indefinitely, but you have to know, the more number of therapies you take, the more the side-effects are. Also know that many women have lived fruitful lives while taking the treatment for the metastatic disease. It is hard to take decisions when your life is at stake, but it is also necessary that you do it. There is research going on for prolonging lives of people who have this disease, and that research will surely help you.
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