Treatments and Services

Most women with breast cancer will have some type of breast surgery as part of their treatment plan. There are several types of surgery, including surgery to remove the cancer, surgery to see whether the cancer has spread, surgery to reconstruct the breast after it or part of it has been removed and surgery to relieve the symptoms of advanced cancer.

Breast-conserving surgery (BCS) removes only part of the breast. How much of the breast is removed depends on the size of the tumor and where it is located. The medical term for this kind of surgery is a partial (or segmental) mastectomy. It is also called a lumpectomy or quadrantectomy.

Chemotherapy is a medication or combination of medications used to treat cancer. Chemotherapy can be given orally (as a pill) or injected intravenously (IV).

Hormone therapy is used to treat cancers that are hormone receptor-positive (meaning there are hormone receptors present in the cells). Breast cancers can be estrogen receptor-positive (ER-positive), progesterone receptor-positive (PR-positive) or both (referred to simply as hormone receptor-positive). The female hormone estrogen can fuel cancer growth. Hormone therapy drugs block the effects of estrogen or lower its levels.

For patients with advanced-stage melanoma, immunotherapy may improve the body’s natural immune response to cancer. Immunotherapy recruits the body’s own immune system and uses it to fight cancer all over the body, making it difficult for cancer cells to hide or develop defenses against it. Immunotherapy has the potential to keep working even after the patient has completed treatment.

If the physician performs a sentinel lymph node biopsy, and cancer is found in the sentinel nodes, it is likely a lymph node dissection will be advised to remove the other lymph nodes in the area.

Some breast cancer patients may need lymph node surgery. Lymph node surgery is performed for staging purposes to find out whether the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes under the arm (axillary lymph nodes). One or more lymph nodes may be removed for examination under a microscope in one of two ways:  an axillary lymph node dissection or a sentinel lymph node biopsy.

Mastectomy removes the whole breast. There are multiple types of mastectomy. The two most common types of mastectomy are simple (total) mastectomy and modified radical mastectomy. A simple mastectomy removes just the breast. When the lymph nodes underneath the arm (called the axillary lymph nodes) are removed in addition to the breast, it is called a modified radical mastectomy.

A biopsy is when your doctor removes a small piece of tissue from an organ, muscle, or growth. Biopsies of your organs or muscles can be used for to diagnose various conditions or abnormalities, including cancers, inflammatory diseases, and more. In some cases, a biopsy may remove the entirety of the abnormal tissue.

Percutaneous ethanol injection uses ethanol, a type of alcohol, to destroy cancer cells. The physician guides the ethanol directly into the tumor using ultrasound. Generally, this procedure only requires local anesthesia. If the patient has multiple tumors, it may require general anesthesia.