Although MBC has spread to another part of the body, it is still considered and treated as breast cancer. As hard as it is to hear, MBC cannot be cured, the focus of treating MBC is on length and quality of life and the treatment is highly personalized. A person’s specific treatment plan is guided by many medical factors, including: characteristics of the cancer cells, location of metastasis, symptoms, past breast cancer treatments. The most common treatments available for metastatic breast cancer are chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, targeted therapy, and surgery and radiation therapy. Chemotherapy, hormonal therapy and targeted therapies are systemic, meaning they travel through the bloodstream and treat the whole body. Surgery and radiation therapy are local, only affecting cells in and around tumors. Most treatments will be given either intravenously, or by vein, or orally as a pill taken by mouth.
1- Surgery: a local treatment, can sometimes ease or prevent symptoms and side effects at the original or metastatic site (for example, thebrain). If one or a few metastatic sites remain stable over time, surgerymay be used to remove the disease. Recent research suggests thatremoving the original (primary) tumor in those first diagnosed withmetastatic breast cancer may lengthen life, especially when the cancerresponds to chemotherapy.
2- Chemotherapy: a systemic therapy, is given by infusion into a vein or is taken as a pill. It kills rapidly dividing cells in order toslow or stop the growth of cancer. In many cases, chemotherapy will be given as a secondarytreatment that comes after your first line of treatment, to help preventthe cancer from growing again.
3- Hormonal Therapies: are targeted treatments used to treat hormonereceptor-positive breast cancer. Namely, cancer cells are found to be hormone responsive which means the hormones estrogen and progesterone that exist naturally in our bodies can actually fuel your cancer and make it more active. This is commonly referred to as ER-positive (ER+) or PR-positive (PR+) status. If the tumor is ER+ and/or PR+, you may not only benefit from traditional chemotherapy, but the hormonal therapies will be the most effective approach for this type of cancer and havefewer side effects than chemotherapy.
4- Targeted Therapies attack specific proteins or genes on or within cancercells that help the cells grow. Targeted therapies include medicines thattreat HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer. HER2 is a protein that acts as a receptor on the surface of the cancer cell. It also acts as a fertilizer, causing the cancer cells to reproduce. All breast cancer cells have some HER2 receptors, but about 20-30% of patients have breast cancers with many extra copies of this protein. If you have extra HER2, your cancer can be classified as HER2-positive. Targeted therapy has the potential to be personalized from person to person. Many types of targeted treatments arein clinical trials.
5- Radiation Therapy, a local therapy, works to damage cancer cells inspecific areas of the body. In metastatic breast cancer, radiation therapyis used to shrink tumors, ease pain and improve your quality of life.
