Women who receive a type of partial-breast radiation called brachytherapy may go on to have higher rates of breast cancer recurrence and side effects such as breast pain and infection than women receiving whole-breast radiation, a new study indicates.
Brachytherapy is an increasingly popular treatment option for women with early-stage breast cancer who have had a lumpectomy, which is surgery to remove just the part of the breast with the tumor. The treatment, which involves inserting a radioactive pellet near the lumpectomy site, can be as short as one or two weeks, compared with the six-week course of whole-breast radiation, which directs beams of radiation at the entire breast.
Although brachytherapy patients experienced more complications and had more mastectomies, indicating their breast cancer came back, there was no difference in survival rates between the two groups five years after treatment.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Read more from U.S. News.
