7 Healthcast

Air Date: Thursday, October 27, 2005

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New hope

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. About 200-thousand woman in this country are diagnosed every year with the disease. It's the second leading cause of cancer death in women after lung cancer. A new treatment strategy seems to be making a difference in the fight against this disease. 7Healthcast Reporter Dr. Deanna Lites has more.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that mammograms and improved drug therapies have contributed almost equally to the decrease in deaths from breast cancer. The combined treatments helped Lori Herscotts. Four years ago, a spot on her mammogram turned out to be malignant.

Herscott say, "I thought, my whole life was you know just, gone. I thought I was gone die. Luckily, I caught my cancer early."

After surgery and radiation to get rid of the cancerous lump she received what has become an increasingly common part of breast cancer care and what seems to be making the big difference.

She got preventive chemotherapy and hormone treatment, even while she was cancer free, to keep the cancer from coming back. There's only one problem with preventive chemotherapy; doctors don't know which women benefit from it, so they offer it to almost everyone.

Dr. Eric Winer, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, "Much of the work going on both laboratory work and clinical work these days is about trying to better identify which tumors and which patients are going to get the benefit from what are sometimes pretty toxic therapies."

Herscott chose to have the treatment. She says, "I wanted to do that everything that I could do for myself so that I wouldn't have to look back and say 'oh I should have done that, I should have done this.'"

Today, Herscott remains cancer free and glad she underwent the difficult treatment that is proving to be a lifesaver.

Before 1990 the death rate from breast cancer was climbing. Since then it has been dropping about two percent a year. Today's study shows that it's regular screening and the combination of preventative chemotherapy and hormone treatment that's making a difference.

(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)