Skipping radiation after surgery may not affect overall survival for women 65 and older with small hormone-positive breast cancer tumors, provided that they receive five years of endocrine therapy, says the study, published Wednesday in. But it may be associated with a higher risk of cancer returning in the same breast.
The study included data on 1,326 women with breast cancer who were 65 and older. From April 16, 2003, to December 22, 2009, 658 of the women were randomly assigned to receive radiation therapy across their whole breast, and 668 of them received no radiation therapy. The trial was conducted across 76 centers in the United Kingdom, Greece, Australia and Serbia.
And overall survival at 10 years was nearly identical: 80.8 per cent without radiation therapy and 80.7 per cent with it, the researchers found. Sixteen deaths in the no-radiotherapy group and 15 deaths in the radiotherapy group were due to breast cancer. "So we've had evidence before this paper that in women over 70, adding radiation lowers the risk of local recurrence, but it doesn't change survival. And this study is really adding to the weight of that evidence, but it's also, of course, lowering the age from 70 to 65," Gerber said. "The role of radiation in these women is really reducing this risk of local recurrence, which it does, but there's really no effect on overall survival.
And if that doesn’t work, get MAID
MAID!!
TRANSLATION : Get vaxxed and register for the MAID program .