Women with breast cancer who receive one shot of radiotherapy immediately after surgery experience the same benefits as those who have up to three days to three weeks, an international medical study has found.
The technique, known as targeted intraoperative radiotherapy, is being used more and more all over the world instead of requiring women to undergo weeks of painful and debilitating treatment.
Eight out of 10 of the 2,298 participants in the study, women over 45 with early-stage breast cancer who had surgery to remove a clump of up to 3.5 cm, did not need further radiotherapy after they had the only dose, researchers at the British-led study found.
The findings are based on results from 32 hospitals in 10 countries including the United Kingdom. During the treatment, performed immediately after a lumpectomy, a ball-shaped device is placed a few centimeters in the area of the breast where the cancer has been and a single dose of radiotherapy is given. The procedure takes 20 to 30 minutes.
The 80% of patients for whom it works therefore occur between 15 and 30 times in the coming weeks to return to hospital to have further sessions of radiotherapy.
The new study, published in the BMJ, found that women who underwent single radiotherapy had fewer side effects related to receiving radiation compared to conventional radiotherapy for full breasts and had less pain, a better cosmetic outcome and a better liveability.
“This reduces the amount of time in hospital and enables women to recover faster, which means they can return to their lives faster,” said lead author Jayant Vaidya, a professor of surgery and oncology at University College London.
Prof Jeffrey S Tobias, a co-author, said the findings showed that the treatment – developed at UCL in 2000 – could help reduce the stress on overworked hospital radiology departments.
Mia Rosenblatt, assistant director of policies and campaigns at the benign breast cancer No, said the research was encouraging and confirmed that the treatment could cut women’s visits to the hospital and reduce the side effects of radiotherapy.
But more work was needed to help fine-tune the selection of women receiving single-use radiotherapy, as some in the study also needed additional traditional radiotherapy. In addition, some hospitals now offer an alternative of five doses to the conventional week-long option, so considering the benefits of single-dose treatment compared to what is needed, they added.
