Early Breast Cancer Treatment

What is early breast cancer?

Early breast cancer is cancer that is contained in the breast or has only spread to the lymph nodes in the underarm area. This term often describes stage I and stage II breast cancer.
In the U.S., most breast cancers are found at these early stages.

Prognosis for early breast cancer

With treatment, people with early breast cancer usually have a very good prognosis.
However, survival depends on each person’s diagnosis and treatment.
One large study found about 90 percent of women diagnosed between 1990-2004 with early breast cancer lived at least 5 years beyond diagnosis [119].
With improvements in treatment since that time, survival for women diagnosed today is even higher.

Treatment for early breast cancer

Treatment for early breast cancer usually involves some combination of surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, hormone therapy and/or targeted therapy.

Surgery and radiation therapy

Surgery

Surgery is usually the first step in treating early breast cancer.
You may have a mastectomy (the entire breast is removed) or a lumpectomy (only the tumor and some surrounding tissue are removed).
With either type of surgery, some lymph nodes in the underarm area (axillary nodes) may be removed to find out whether the cancer has spread there.

Radiation therapy

Lumpectomy

Women who have a lumpectomy also have radiation therapy to the breast to get rid of any cancer cells that may remain. This lowers the chances of the cancer coming back (recurrence) [2].

Mastectomy

Most women who have a mastectomy don’t need radiation therapy.
However, in some cases, radiation therapy is used after mastectomy to treat the chest wall, the axillary lymph nodes and the lymph nodes around the collarbone.