Lumpectomy Plus Radiation Equals Longer Survival

A new study confirms that using radiation therapy after a lumpectomy dramatically reduces the chances that breast cancer will recur, and substantially cuts the death rate.

A landmark study in 2005 first showed the benefits of radiation after a lumpectomy - a procedure that removes the tumor but not the entire breast - but that study involved a small number of women and followed them for only a short time.

The current study, published in the journal the Lancet, examined data on nearly 11,000 women in 17 clinical trials that compared radiation vs. no radiation after lumpectomy.

Good results

Overall, the study found, using radiation on the affected breast cut recurrence rates in half and reduced the mortality rate by one-sixth.

"For the first time, this showed this important linkage between using radiation to avoid local recurrence and improving long-term survival," says Jay Harris, M.D., at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Initially, radiation therapy was thought to be effective only at preventing recurrence of breast cancer. Radiation is used to destroy any stray cancer cells that might remain in the breast after surgery.

Longer survival

But the current study showed that 15 years after diagnosis, 25 percent of women given radiation were alive, vs. 21 percent in the control group. At that time, the absolute risk reduction in all-cause mortality was 3 percent, the study found.

The results varied according to age, how advanced the tumor was, whether the tumor was sensitive to estrogen, whether a patient had taken the estrogen-suppressing drug tamoxifen, and how extensive the surgery had been.

"Across the board, no matter what those features were, women benefited from radiation," says Shelly Hayes, M.D., at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Always talk with your health care provider to find out more information.