An important new warning for breast-cancer patients

How much money would you save by cutting back or eliminating radiation sessions for your breast cancer?

Plenty!

You could save SEVERAL thousand dollars, according to a new study. Altogether, it would add up to hundreds of millions.

And what would be the health advantages of cutting back on radiation sessions or — even better — dropping them entirely?

Those would be… priceless.

Less is more
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) did women a favor a few years ago.

In 2011, it released new radiation guidelines for early-stage, non-invasive breast cancer. Up until then, the conventional treatment after lumpectomy called for one radiation session per day, five days each week, for five to seven weeks.

That’s an intense schedule. Especially when you consider that it’s simply a precaution to prevent recurrence.

Based on the results of several studies, ASTRO’s new approach–called “hypofractionated whole breast radiation”–advised that radiation oncologists could safely scale back the schedule to a less demanding three to five weeks.

One catch: ASTRO said that radiation doses would have to be increased so women would still get the same amount of radiation over the shorter period.

Even so, the less grueling plan did deliver some surprising benefits.

Follow-up research showed that when women were treated with the shorter schedule, their side effects were lessened. Patients reported that fatigue, skin inflammation, breast pain, burning sensations, and other adverse reactions were all significantly reduced.

Now, Duke University researchers found that nearly 60 percent of the 40,000 patients in their just-published study could have been treated with a shorter course of radiation or — and here’s the kicker — skipped it entirely (especially if the women were age 70 or older).

According to those Duke researchers, individual patients would save thousands of dollars by cutting down on the length of radiation courses.

Because, however, their data only went up to 2011, some experts said that it’s possible women these days are routinely getting those shorter courses.

But I don’t think that’s the case.

A 2014 study found that a full two-thirds of women who were candidates for the reduced schedule were still getting six to seven weeks of radiation.

And we certainly have no reason to believe that oncologists are following the guidelines any better in 2017.

But basic human nature tells us that a recommendation to shut down a multimillion-dollar cash flow isn’t likely to get a warm embrace from the radiation industry.

The Duke team suggested that any woman with early-stage, non-invasive breast cancer should get a second opinion if her radiation oncologist recommends the longer course of treatments.

And I agree. But they need a second opinion a long time before that.

Diagnosing and treating breast cancer is far from an exact science. Every woman who is diagnosed deserves a second opinion right from the start — because there are simply too many being overtreated.

A few years ago, we told you about a breast-cancer study that I still find shocking. When researchers examined data from tens of thousands of women, they discovered that one in four had been over-diagnosed with a breast cancer that never would have done them any harm if left alone.

Any radiation can cause secondary cancers, and radiation of the breasts can also harm the heart and lungs. It’s appalling that so many women are burdened with these unnecessary toxic treatments.

Which is why it’s vital to always get a second opinion on a breast cancer diagnosis — or even a third!

And always make sure that you question radiation treatments. Always.

“Are some breast cancer patients getting too much radiation?” Kathleen Doheny, March 15, 2017, CBS News, cbsnews.com