Metastatic Breast Cancer Patients May Enjoy Longer Life with New Treatment Options

Patients diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer may enjoy longer and fuller lives thanks to new treatments that are now available. Metastatic breast cancer is breast cancer that has spread to other parts of the body beyond the axillary lymph nodes. The increased number of secondary tumors make it difficult to handle which means doctors can only try to treat it by handling the symptoms and trying to contain it. Curing the cancer is no longer an option at this point.

These new treatments are a big step in the fight against cancer because the quality of life of cancer patients is very important even with a bleak prognosis. Here is why such treatments make a big difference:

• Many times, patients cured of breast cancer may have it recurring even several years later. It is also not uncommon for it to have spread to other parts of the body, thus rendering the cancer incurable. Its presence in too many areas may make surgery to eliminate it difficult. The patient must then contend with living with cancer.
  
  

• Knowing there is a fighting chance usually gives patients strength and courage to keep living life. It is the hope that pushes them further towards living a full and purposeful life even when they know they have less time than they had envisioned.
  
  

• Disease always catches people unawares and with so much left to do. Any treatment that gives more time for patients to spend with their loved ones and put some things in order is always welcome. Those extra months or years can make a huge difference for patients.

For a patient, knowing that they are terminally ill can be devastating. Being able to lengthen this period while living as comfortably as possible using these new treatment options during this time will indeed give them the feeling of having battled cancer and won, on their own terms.