Dr. Alan Stolier, MD, FACS, clinical breast oncologist, shares his expert medical perspective with a series of educational and scientific articles.
Breast Cancer Incidence Rising As Plunge In Death Rate Begins To Slow There are currently 3.8 million women with a history of breast cancer living in the United States. Since 1989 the death rate has plunged 40%. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), these gains have begun to slow. Spokesmen for the ACS suggest…
Can Women Who Are Diagnosed With Very Small Areas Of Noninvasive Cancer (DCIS) Avoid Radiation And Hormonal Therapy? Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is breast cancer, which does not leave the milk duct and cannot spread to other parts of the body (metastasize). Before the mid1980s, it was usually discovered by finding a breast lump….
Tumor Gene Testing: Triumphs And Deficiencies A post on this website several weeks ago discussed the impact of examining breast cancer genes and how it has impacted treatment. It is important to remember that we are not talking about the presence of gene mutations that one inherits from a parent which are called germline mutations….
Preoperative Hormonal Therapy: Chemotherapy Is Not the Only Preoperative Treatment Available in Patients with Advanced Disease Between 1-2 women out of every 10 who developed breast cancer, have what is considered locally advanced disease. Locally advanced disease is generally considered tumors greater than 2 cm in diameter, involved axillary lymph nodes, and or tumors that…
Immunotherapy Is Finding A Place In The Treatment Of Breast Cancer For a tumor to grow or progress, the cancer cell must evade the immune system. In the past, it was thought that only melanoma and kidney cancers would respond to immunotherapy or treatment that affects the immune system. In recent years, our knowledge of…
Repurposing Older Drugs For Cancer Treatment We have long known that the body puts out special hormones or chemicals in response to stress and inflammation. The most important of these are epinephrine (Adrenaline™), cortisone, and hormones called prostaglandins. Most of you are familiar with epinephrine and cortisone but possibly not so much with prostaglandins. Prostaglandins…
In this Prophylactic Mastectomy and Breast Reconstruction video series, watch as surgeons at the Center for Restorative Breast Surgery explain how prophylactic mastectomy can reduce the risk of breast cancer by about 90%. To restore a sense of wholeness, many women decide to have breast reconstruction immediately after prophylactic mastectomy surgery….
A New Dawn: The Development of Genomic Testing for Breast Cancer Until several years ago, a majority of women who developed invasive breast cancer required chemotherapy with or without hormonal therapy as part of their treatment. In the early 2000s, we began to see a change. To understand these changes, we should look to the…
BRCA1 and BRCA2 are far and away the most commonly inherited mutations that predispose women to breast and ovarian cancer. However, since the relatively recent use of panel testing, multiple genes have been discovered that can also predispose women to breast, ovarian, and other cancers….
40 Year Trends in Postmenopausal Hormone Therapy and the Incidence of Breast Cancer Disparities Exist Between Black and White Women The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) initiated 2 randomized trials in 1993. The trials included conjugated equine estrogen (CEE) in postmenopausal women with a prior hysterectomy and CEE plus medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) in those with intact…