Canada Pharmacy Suggests Breast MRI to Best Track Patients Response to Chemo

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. 

"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 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 pharmacy collaborates with researchers to improve positive results in various ways possible. 

The primary risk factors for breast cancer are female sex, age, lack of childbearing or breastfeeding, higher hormone levels, race, economic status and dietary iodine deficiency. 

Most cases of breast cancer cannot be prevented through any action on the part of the affected person. The World Cancer Research Fund estimated that 38% of breast cancer cases in the US are preventable through reducing alcohol intake, increasing physical activity levels and maintaining a healthy weight. It also estimated that 42% of breast cancer cases in the UK could be prevented in this way, as well as 28% in Brazil and 20% in China. 

Smoking tobacco may increase the risk of breast cancer with the greater the amount of smoking and the earlier in life smoking begins the higher the risk. 

In a study of attributable risk and epidemiological factors published in 1995, later age at first birth and not having children accounted for 29.5% of U.S. breast cancer cases, family history of breast cancer accounted for 9.1% and factors correlated with higher income contributed 18.9% of cases. Attempts to explain the increased incidence (but lower mortality) correlated with higher income include epidemiologic observations such as lower birth rates correlated with higher income and better education, possible overdiagnosis and overtreatment because of better access to breast cancer screening, and the postulation of as yet unexplained lifestyle and dietary factors correlated with higher income.