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The Pain Of Cancer Treatment

Why do I have so much pain after my cancer treatment?

there's pain with radiation burns and skin changes. A lot of times people are given medications that help increase the level of blood cells in their body, their white blood cells in particular, and that can cause a lot of bone pain which can be very severe. That's where most of my pain was, was really terrible bone pain.

a mastectomy and is favoring one arm a little bit, and then is overusing the other arm, and then all of a sudden develops shoulder problems in the opposite arm, in her good arm. Tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, so on. And so there's a lot of different reasons why people may develop pain during cancer treatment because your body is undergoing so many different changes and because cancer treatment is usually so targeted throughout your body rather than just at one specific site.","publisher":"WebMD Video"} ]]>

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Why do I have so much pain after my cancer treatment?

Radiation After Breast Reconstruction

Previous studies have shown breast cancer patients who receive radiation therapy after undergoing breast reconstruction and a mastectomy may be more likely to develop complications. However, a new study shows this may not be the case.

Researchers from the Fox Chase Cancer Center studied 85 women with breast cancer who underwent a mastectomy, breast reconstruction, and postoperative radiation between 1987 and 2002. Seventy patients received radiation after their mastectomy and reconstruction procedure. The other 15 patients received radiation prior to reconstruction. Fifty patients underwent a reconstructive procedure called tissue expander placement with or without an implant, and 35 patients received a transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous (TRAM) reconstructive flap.

Results of the study show, after five years, none of the patients who received a TRAM flap had major complications or required corrective surgery. Only 5 percent of patients who were in the tissue expander placement group had a major complication, and two of these patients had to have their implant removed. Nearly 40 percent of patients in the TRAM group had minor complications, and about 15 percent of the women with implants had minor complications.

Penny R. Anderson, M.D., from the Fox Chase Cancer Center, says, "What's interesting about this reported complication rate for breast implants is that not only is it low compared to other studies involving radiation after reconstruction, it is also low when considering the rate of major complications following reconstruction when radiation is not a factor."

Cancer Recurrence In Older Breast Cancer Patients Reduced By Radiation Therapy

According to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Radiation Therapy after Lumpectomy and five years of treatment with the drug tamoxifen can dramatically reduce the risk of both cancer recurrence and new tumors in older women with early breast cancer.

"While these treatments are standard care for younger patients, it is has been shown that older women are less likely to receive them," said lead author Ann M. Geiger, M.P.H., Ph.D., an associate professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest and formerly of Kaiser Permanente Southern California. "Our results provide strong evidence of the importance of providing high quality care to all patients, regardless of age."

The results, reported on-line today in Cancer, a journal of the American Cancer Society, will be published in the March 1 print issue of the journal.

Geiger said there is a pressing need for information about the effectiveness of breast cancer treatments in women over 65 because this is an expanding segment of the U.S. Population. Women in this age group are at the highest risk for breast cancer and make up half of those diagnosed, but only recently have been included in treatment trials.

"Based on our findings, we recommend that mastectomy, or lumpectomy with radiation therapy, along with adequate duration of hormone therapy for women with hormone-responsive tumors, be considered standard therapy in women of all ages and health conditions, except for those with very limited life expectancies," said Geiger.

The study also included women undergoing chemotherapy, but the number of participants wasn't large enough to evaluate the treatment's effectiveness.

The study involved 1,837 women age 65 or older with early stage breast cancer that was confined to the breast or lymph nodes. The women underwent either mastectomy or lumpectomy, also known as breast-conserving surgery, from 1990 to 1994. Treatment was at one of six health systems (in Washington, Massachusetts, Minnesota, California, and New Mexico) that were part of the Cancer Research Network funded by the National Cancer Institute.

Participants were identified from medical records and were followed for 10 years. Researchers recorded all cancer recurrences: "local" recurrences in the same breast, "regional" recurrences in the lymph nodes, skin or chest muscle on the same side as the original diagnosis, and "distant" recurrences in the brain or other areas of the body. They also recorded cases of new breast tumors, not related to the original tumor, in the opposite breast -- known as a second primary breast cancer.

Twenty percent of women treated with mastectomy or lumpectomy experienced a recurrence or second primary breast cancer during the follow-up. Women treated with lumpectomy but no radiation therapy had a risk of local or regional recurrence that was 3.5 times higher than women radiation therapy after their surgery. The increased risk of any recurrence or second primary breast cancer was 60 percent higher.

The study also revealed that for women who took tamoxifen, but not chemotherapy, those who took the drug for less than a year had a 90 percent higher risk of a recurrence than women who took the drug for five years. Tamoxifen, a drug that blocks the effects of estrogen on the body, is often used to treat women whose tumors are sensitive to estrogen.

One-third of the study participants were 65-69 years old, half were 70-79 and 20 percent were 80 and older. About 80 percent of the women were white, 10 percent were black and 10 percent were Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islanders.

Source-EurekalertSRI

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