What is the treatment for advanced breast cancer?

Locally advanced breast cancer refers to a large breast lump or axillary lymph node enlargement, and metastatic lymph nodes adhere to surrounding tissues. Local advanced breast cancer should be operated immediately, the tension of the flap may be too high to suture, and the residual rate of tumor focus or metastatic lymph nodes is high. Now the rise of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (preoperative chemotherapy) can reduce the staging of locally advanced breast cancer, and surgery can achieve better results after the primary focus and lymph nodes are reduced. Some patients can choose preoperative radiotherapy or preoperative endocrine therapy, both of which are preoperative adjuvant therapy, hoping to narrow the focus after treatment and achieve the purpose of removing the focus.

Some metastatic breast cancers can be treated with local therapy. If the metastatic focus of liver or lung is single and small, patients can first remove the metastatic focus to obtain pathological diagnosis and destroy tumor cells to the maximum extent if conditions permit. For pleural effusion caused by lung metastasis and pleural metastasis, pleural puncture can be used to release pleural effusion first, and then chemotherapy drugs can be injected into the chest. Pain caused by bone metastasis can be treated by local radiotherapy or isotope radiotherapy and bisphosphonate therapy. Local metastasis of chest wall can be surgically removed, and local chest wall can be treated with radiotherapy. Active treatment of metastatic breast cancer, some patients can achieve good results, and the survival time is longer.

Systemic advanced breast cancer refers to stage ⅳ breast cancer, that is, organs outside the breast have been invaded by tumors, such as liver metastasis, lung metastasis and bone metastasis of breast cancer. Generally speaking, the prognosis of advanced breast cancer is poor, but about 10% patients can still survive for 5 years or more. After discovering distant organ metastasis of breast cancer, we should actively treat it according to different conditions. Similarly, the treatment of breast cancer metastasis can also be divided into local treatment and systemic treatment. Because distant metastasis suggests that tumor cells may exist all over the body, systemic treatment is essential. Chemotherapy and endocrine therapy in systemic therapy are applied according to the specific situation of patients. It is generally believed that the previously used drugs have developed resistance to metastatic lesions during treatment, and second-line drugs should be replaced.

Due to the limitation of medical development, there is no good method for fairly advanced breast cancer. The treatment of this kind of patients is mainly to relieve pain, improve the quality of life and prolong life. more