Programs
Genetic Counseling is used for high-risk women.

Specialized Screening Program allows women to have regular mammograms, frequent breast exams, and use additional cancer detection techniques such as an MRI. Also, personal risk assessment and consultation with experts allows individuals to examine the side effects, risks and benefits of treatment options.

Screening Mammogram (low dose X-ray) can detect cancer at its earliest stage when it is most treatable and not yet large enough to feel. This method has contributed to improvements in breast cancer survival rates.

Surgery
Biopsy Procedures are little microsurgeries that permit the removal of breast tissue by a surgeon or radiologist to examine for cancer cells. More than 80% of biopsied breast abnormalities are benign. Nevertheless, a medical professional should evaluate lumps or other symptoms. There are axillary node dissections, open excisional (lumpectomy), needle aspiration, and sentinel node biopsies.

Lumpectomy is a surgery where a small, localized (in one area) tumor is removed from the breast.

Mastectomy is the complete removal of the affected breast and possibly tissue under the arm depending on the severity. There are radical, partial and prophylactic (preventative surgery to reduce probability of getting breast cancer) mastectomies. Prophylactic mastectomies are controversial.

Cancer Medication
Chemotherapy reaches diseased cells throughout the body. This is important after radiation therapy or surgery to destroy the remaining abnormal cells. This is called adjuvant therapy. The drugs can also be used before to decrease tumor size, which is termed neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Side Effects are hair loss, nausea, diarrhea, fatigue, mouth sores, and reduced blood cell count, which can lead to a person having anemia.

Experimental Treatment
Hyperthermia Therapy is an experimental procedure that uses ultrasound or other frequencies to raise the temperature of cancer cells in a localized region of advanced primary cancer. This can be used after a mastectomy if there cancer comes back. This treatment is effective with heat sensitive cancers and even more so in combination with radiotherapy.

Radio Therapies
Radiotherapy or Radiation Therapy is used to eliminate cancer by reducing abnormal or cancerous cells and to relieve symptoms. Some treatments use high doses of radiation while others aim high energy x-rays at the tumor or diseased portion of the breast. This will damage the DNA so cancerous cells cannot reproduce. It may be used prior to surgery to decrease the size of the tumor, and after surgery to kill the remaining cells. This is effective on patients in the early stages of cancer so it often eliminates the need for surgery.

External Radiation Therapy destroys tumors that are close to the skin’s surface or deeper, in five to seven weeks.

Brachytherapy (Internal Radiation Therapy) is a process that takes five days or less and therefore has less side effects that external radiation therapy. A radioactive source such as cesium or radium is placed near the cancer until the cancer is controlled. The high radiation is implanted so as to cause less damage to healthy tissue. A new technique inserts pellets near the cancer for a certain period of time each day. When taken out, a person can interact with others once again.

Intensity Modulation Radiotherapy (IMRT) is a method by which tumors are treated with high radiation and the healthy tissue is left unharmed. Narrow beams of radiation intersect the treatment area. This technique is good for tumors complex in shape and size. Those close to vital organs can be treated with minimal loss of function.

Side effects of radiation therapies

     Physical

• Damage to normal tissue is possible
• Local skin irritation (reddening, dryness)
• Fatigue
• Nausea

     Emotional

• Distress
• Grief
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Loss of appetite
• Loss of hair (alopecia- more common with chemotherapy)