No radiation for some breast cancer

BOSTON, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Early-stage breast cancer patients with limited lymph node involvement may not require post-surgery radiation therapy, U.S. researchers said.

Dr. Tse-Kuan Yu of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston reviewed the cases of 427 women who underwent neoadjuvant chemotherapy and mastectomy from 1985 to 2004 to observe the value of treating early-stage breast cancer with radiation therapy.

Of the 427 women, radiation was administered to 253 due to more aggressive tumor features. Those who received radiation more commonly had four or more pathologically involved lymph nodes or lymphovascular invasion.

"Radiation after surgery has been shown to benefit the survival of patients who have more advanced tumors," Yu told the 50th annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology in Boston. "However, administering neoadjuvant chemotherapy prior to surgery has changed how radiation oncologists need to approach treating patients with stage one and two breast cancers."

Of the group of patients who were not treated with radiation, 20 percent of those with four or more pathologically involved lymph nodes after pre-surgery chemotherapy relapsed compared to 4.2 percent of those with one to three involved lymph nodes.

However, patients with zero involved lymph nodes after receiving chemotherapy prior to surgery exhibited a 0 percent recurrence rate.