Canada Drugs Review on Breast MRI in Tracking Chemotherapy Outcomes

Getting chemotherapy before breast cancer surgery can mean the difference between a mastectomy or a breast-conserving lumpectomy, experts say. And new research shows that getting an MRI during the first round of chemo can help predict quickly if the cancer will respond to the treatment. Thus, increasing the favorable results of breast cancer drugs like generic Femara Letrozole. 

"MRI works better than clinical examination of the tumor, the standard way to assess how well the chemotherapy is working," said researcher Dr. Nola Hylton, a professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at the University of California, San Francisco. 

"What we are trying to do is fine-tune MRI so it can be a more sensitive measure of whether people are responding [to the chemo]," Hylton said. Aside from chemo responses, to buy Femara online Canada will never end up wasted. 

"This initial finding said that after only one cycle of treatment, measuring the change in the tumor volume [by MRI] was very predictive of whether that patient ultimately had a good response to all the chemotherapy," Hylton said.

"Previous research has found that women who get chemotherapy before their surgery are more likely to be able to have breast-conserving surgery than women given chemo after their surgery." 

The findings don't surprise Dr. Joanne Mortimer, director of the Women's Cancer Program and co-director of the Breast Cancer Program at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, Calif. 

"It's a great idea," Mortimer said of performing the MRI sooner. "The MRI seems to be a more objective way [to gauge effectiveness of chemo]." 

Already, Mortimer said, "many doctors are ordering an MRI after chemotherapy is complete. The practice is to perform the MRI after the entire chemo session." 

"When you give chemotherapy, the blood supply to the tumor changes," Mortimer said. 

"The MRI detects activity such as blood vessel formation in tumors, a marker of whether the tumor is responding to chemo," Hylton noted. Canada drugsreview can aid in improving positive results in various ways possible. 

One such factor may be past hormone replacement therapy, which was typically more widespread in higher income groups.

The genes associated with hereditary breast-ovarian cancer syndromes usually increase the risk slightly or moderately; the exception is women and men who are carriers of BRCA mutations. These people have a very high lifetime risk for breast and ovarian cancer, depending on the portion of the proteins where the mutation occurs. Instead of a 12 percent lifetime risk of breast cancer, women with one of these genes have a risk of approximately 60 percent.

In more recent years, research has indicated the impact of diet and other behaviors on breast cancer. These additional risk factors include a high-fat diet, alcohol intake, obesity, and environmental factors such as tobacco use, radiation, endocrine disruptors and shiftwork. Although the radiation from mammography is a low dose, the cumulative effect can cause cancer. 

In addition to the risk factors specified above, demographic and medical risk factors include:

·         Personal history of breast cancer: A woman who had breast cancer in one breast has an increased risk of getting a second breast cancer.

·         Family history: A woman's risk of breast cancer is higher if her mother, sister, or daughter had breast cancer, the risk becomes significant if at least two close relatives had breast or ovarian cancer. The risk is higher if her family member got breast cancer before age 40. An Australian study found that having other relatives with breast cancer (in either her mother's or father's family) may also increase a woman's risk of breast cancer and other forms of cancer, including brain and lung cancers.

·         Certain breast changes: Atypical hyperplasia and lobular carcinoma in situ found in benign breast conditions such as fibrocystic breast changes are correlated with an increased breast cancer risk.