What are the standardized treatments for breast cancer?

  Extensive current research has concluded that breast cancer is a systemic disease that generally requires a combination of measures for treatment. The main measures include surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, endocrine therapy, and biologically targeted therapy. There are also adjuvant treatments using Chinese herbal medicine. Clinically, the attending physician will choose these treatment measures (alone or in combination, or sequentially) according to the patient’s own disease characteristics. Among them, surgery and radiotherapy belong to the category of local treatment; other treatment measures belong to systemic treatment.  Surgery is one of the main treatment methods for breast cancer, which is mainly to remove the tumor and breast gland, remove the lymphatic tissue and fatty tissue in the relevant area, and try to achieve the purpose of curing the tumor. However, surgery is not the only treatment, and the timing of surgery should be determined according to the condition; regardless of the size of the lump and whether there are distant metastases, blind surgery is not effective. If the mass is large, several cycles of chemotherapy are often needed, and surgery will be performed after the tumor shrinks and the metastatic enlarged lymph nodes shrink; if the disease is late at the time of initial diagnosis, some patients can still get the opportunity of surgery after non-surgical treatment.  2.Chemotherapy: Generally, 6-8 cycles of chemotherapy are needed, one cycle every 21 or 14 days. There are several common side effects of chemotherapy drugs for breast cancer: nausea, vomiting, fatigue, bone marrow suppression, leukopenia, fever, hair loss, etc. Doctors will use some adjuvant treatment measures targeted to detoxify, enhance resistance and protect organ functions during the patient’s chemotherapy.  3, radiation therapy (radiotherapy): after breast-conserving surgery, more lymph node metastases, local recurrence, bone metastases, etc., are generally mostly indications for radiation therapy. Specifically for a certain patient, after the initial judgment, the attending physician of the breast specialist will also invite the radiotherapy physician for consultation to determine whether the patient is suitable for radiotherapy, whether there are contraindications to radiotherapy, and the formulation of radiotherapy plan.  Endocrine therapy and biologic targeted therapy are conditional. Generally speaking, ER/PR/HER2 negative so-called “triple negative breast cancer” is not suitable for endocrine therapy and biologic targeted therapy; ER/PR positive patients can take medication for endocrine therapy; HER2 strong positive patients are suitable for biologic targeted therapy. Therefore, pathological diagnosis and immunohistochemical monitoring of these indicators are important.