Women with breast cancer get as much benefit from three weeks of radiotherapy treatment as from the international standard five-week course, research has found.
And fewer trips to hospital mean patients suffer less fatigue.
The ‘less is more’ regime can generate cost savings for the NHS and paves the way for research that could see treatment time fall further to just one week’s radiotherapy.
While relapse rates for women on the shorter course were the same as those on the longer one, the damage caused to healthy tissue was far less
The shorter course of 15 treatments was adopted by many British hospitals in 2008, but doubts remained about longer-term benefits.
BOWEL TEST COULD CUT DEATHS
Two out of five bowel cancers could be prevented if older people had colonoscopy screening every ten years, say researchers.
The procedure allows a doctor to look inside the colon, or large bowel, for cancerous growths using a long flexible tube.
A new study suggests it is the most effective preventive measure against a cancer that is diagnosed in 41,000 Britons each year and which kills 16,000.
The research by Harvard School of Public Health studied 1,815 cases of colorectal cancer and 474 deaths from the disease, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
It found that both colonoscopy and the similar sigmoidoscopy (which uses a smaller tube) were associated with a lower risk of getting colorectal cancer or dying from it.
But only colonoscopy cut the risk for cancers in the proximal or upper part of the colon.
The researchers estimated that if all participants in the study had undergone colonoscopies, 40 per cent of colorectal cancers would have been prevented.
The latest findings, published in The Lancet Oncology journal, build on results from a five-year trial of radiotherapy given to 4,500 British women after surgery for early breast cancer.
The ten-year follow-up confirms the benefits from the earlier trial, including an unexpected small improvement in survival for those on the short course.
It shows the relapse rates of cancer within the same breast are similar to the international standard course, but with significantly less harm to healthy tissue.
‘We’ve shown conclusively that less can be more in breast cancer radiotherapy,’ said chief investigator John Yarnold, professor of clinical oncology at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and honorary consultant at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
‘Both breast cancer recurrence and the side-effects of radiotherapy can occur many years after treatment, so these long-term results provide an important reassurance that the shorter treatment course is the best option for patients.’
The same team is now setting out to investigate whether even fewer doses of radiotherapy could be just as effective, as part of a new trial of 4,000 women called Fast-Forward.
The trial will compare the new standard 15-dose course of radiotherapy treatment, delivered over three weeks, with an even shorter five-dose course, over one week.
Kate Law, director of clinical trials at Cancer Research UK, which funded the latest research, said: ‘What’s really exciting is that as a result of this trial women are already benefiting from the added physical and emotional wellbeing of needing fewer hospital visits for their treatment.
Four out of five women who find a lump and have surgery also undergo radiotherapy treatment
‘Minimising the long-term side effects of treatment is becoming increasingly important as more cancer patients live longer.’
At present, radiotherapy is offered to all women who have breast conserving surgery – around 30,000 a year – where just the lump is removed rather than the whole breast.
Four out of five have treatment which kills any remaining tumour cells in the breast.
Sally Greenbrook, of Breakthrough Breast Cancer charity, said: ‘Many UK hospitals have already adopted this shorter regime, and this study confirms that the NHS is providing the best possible care to UK patients.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2424752/Giving-women-breast-cancer-shorter-course-radiotherapy-BETTER-study-finds.html#ixzz2fkADHeEp
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