Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech

Breast Cancer Studies: Faults With Partial Radiation, New Alternatives To Surgery

December 7, 2011 By AxoGen, Inc.

Marilynn Marchione, AP

New research casts doubt on a popular treatment for breast cancer – a week of radiation to part of the breast instead of longer treatment to all of it.
Women who were given partial radiation were twice as likely to need their breasts removed later because the cancer came back, doctors found.

The treatment uses radioactive pellets briefly placed in the breast instead of radiation beamed from a machine. At least 13 percent of older patients in the U.S. get this now, and it is popular with working women. “Even women who aren’t working appreciate convenience, but they may pay a price in effectiveness if too little tissue is being treated", said study leader Dr. Benjamin Smith of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Results were to be reported Wednesday at a conference in San Antonio along with a more positive development: a new test that may help show which women need only surgery for a very early type of breast cancer called DCIS. The results suggest that about three-fourths of the 45,000 women diagnosed with DCIS annually in the U.S. could skip the radiation and hormone-blocking pills usually recommended to prevent a recurrence.

About 230,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the U.S., most in an early stage. Typical treatment is surgery to remove the lump, followed by radiation every weekday for five to seven weeks. That’s tough, especially for older women and those in rural areas. Doctors hoped that a shorter approach, called brachytherapy, would be just as good with fewer side effects. To do it, they temporarily place a thin tube into the cavity where the tumor was.

“You come in twice a day and there’s a machine that puts in a radiation seed that stays there a few minutes and then you go home,” Smith explained. Treatment takes only five days and the total radiation dose is comparable to the longer method. But a smaller area — just around the lump — gets treated instead of the whole breast. Although at least three companies sell equipment for brachytherapy, no big studies have tested its safety and effectiveness.

Researchers looked at Medicare records on 130,535 women who had lumps removed and radiation. Less than one percent chose brachytherapy in 2000 but that rose to 13 percent by 2007. After accounting for differences in age, tumor size and other factors, researchers found that within five years, four percent of brachytherapy patients needed surgery to remove the breast where the original tumor had been versus only two percent of those given traditional radiation. Hospitalization, infections, broken ribs and breast pain also were more common with brachytherapy.

It remains experimental, and women who want it should join a more rigorous study of it going on now, said Dr. Peter Ravdin, breast cancer chief at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio. “I’m putting patients on the trial and not recommending it otherwise", he said. Brachytherapy costs about twice as much as standard radiation, estimated at $10,000 to $20,000.

Other research involves a test that measures the activity of genes that help predict recurrence risks for women with DCIS, or ductal carcinoma in situ — cancer that is confined to a milk duct. It’s usually found from mammograms before it causes symptoms. Surgery cures most cases, but about 20 percent will recur within 10 years, so doctors usually recommend five to seven weeks of radiation or years of hormone-blocking drugs. “Although it works, it’s a lot of treatment and we treat the many to benefit the few,” because there’s no good way to tell who can safely skip it", said Dr. Lawrence Solin of Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.

He led a study with other researchers and the test’s maker, Genomic Health Inc. of Redwood City, Calif. The company already sells a test to gauge which women with invasive cancers most need chemotherapy versus hormone-blocking medicines alone. The DCIS test uses some of the same genes. Doctors checked its predictive value using 327 stored tumor samples. Test scores separated women into low, high and medium risk groups that reflected how they fared 10 years later. About 75 percent fell into a low-risk category that could be spared treatment beyond surgery.

“If it’s right it would have significant value for patients, but this needs to be validated in a bigger study before the test is widely used", said Robert Clarke, dean for research at Georgetown University Medical Center. “It tells you how well it sorts out a population, but it doesn’t tell you how good it is at putting an individual woman in the right group.”

Dr. Joseph Sparano of Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care in New York, who helped conduct the study, disagreed. “Doctors are making decisions already without this information and the test gives a valuable new clue", he said. But an expensive one. The company will charge the same for the DCIS test as its current one for invasive breast cancer — $4,175, which Medicare and most insurers cover, said chief medical officer Dr. Steven Shak. The company plans to start selling it by the end of the year under federal lab rules that just require proof that the test reliably measures genes — not that this has value for patients.

Related Articles Read More >

Avail Medsystems
How Avail Medsystems seeks to create a connected OR experience
Engineer inspecting artificial hip joint parts in quality control department in orthopaedic factory
Deburring and finishing for beautiful, functional medical devices
FDA logo
FDA seeking innovations to move beyond heater-cooler device problems
Logos of Creo Medical and Intuitive
Creo Medical inks collaboration agreement with Intuitive

DeviceTalks Weekly.

July 1, 2022
Boston Scientific CEO Mike Mahoney on building a corporate culture that drives high growth results
See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

Enewsletter Subscriptions

Enewsletter Subscriptions

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech 100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to E-newsletter
  • Attend our Monthly Webinars
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media LLC. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech