Over 215,000 women are identified as having breast cancer every year. Basically, the breast cancer patients are not only given the surgery, sometimes they are forced to go through chemotherapy or radiotherapy to totally eliminate the cancer. At the moment, these women might need to decide with their doctor if they should have adjuvant therapy which is the medication to help avoid their cancer from coming back. You may interested to read about Cancer Research and Tamoxifen - Breast Cancer Treatment too.
When a woman's breast cancer does come back or spreads to other body parts, she might be at greater risk of dying from the disease. Women whose breast cancer is detected in the nearby lymph nodes at medical diagnosis and people who receive chemotherapy after surgery are believed to be at elevated risk for breast cancer recurrence.
Postmenopausal women whose early-stage breast cancer is hormone-sensitive have a new choice as their first hormone therapy following surgery. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lately permitted Femara (letrozole tablets) on December 28, 2005 for this style of use. This acceptance was based on a median of two years of treatment. The research is still ongoing to look for the long-term safety and effectiveness of Femara. Already a leading breast cancer treatment, Femara has become the only medicine in a group called aromatase inhibitors that is approved for use both immediately following surgery and after 5 years of tamoxifen. The FDA issued Femara a high priority review, a distinction reserved for medications which could probably offer a considerable advancement as compared to products currently on the market.
A panel from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the nation's main group of oncologists, recommends aromatase inhibitors, such as Femara, be part of the optimal adjuvant treatment for this group of women.
"One of the greatest fears confronted by ladies who are treated for early breast cancer is that their cancer will come back. With Femara, we now have a solution that can help address that worry early on, even in patients who we realize encounter the greatest risk of recurrence," said Matthew Ellis, MD, PhD, FRCP, director of the Breast Cancer Program at Washington University in St. Louis.
In a big clinical study of post-surgery breast cancer treatment, researchers compared the effectiveness of Femara and tamoxifen, another drug prescribed after surgery. An analysis performed after 26 months showed that Femara decreased the risk of breast cancer coming back by 21% over the reduction offered by tamoxifen. Patients taking Femara also showed a 27 percent reduction in the risk of the cancer dispersing to distant body parts.
In this study, women at elevated risk of recurrence experienced the greatest benefit from Femara. Femara reduced this risk by twenty nine percent in females whose breast cancer had already spread to the lymph nodes during the time of diagnosis and by 30 percent in women who had prior chemotherapy. The final results also indicated that in these high-risk women, Femara decreased the potential risk of cancer spreading to distant parts of the body by 33 percent and 31 percent, respectively.
In this study, Femara had been usually well tolerated with the most typical unwanted effects including hot flashes, joint pain, night sweats, weight gain and nausea.
Last but not least, the recurrence of breast cancer can be prevented if the Femara is fully utilized by the doctor. Maybe we just need more time to be confident with this new product.
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