Our approach to breast cancer treatment
When you’re facing breast cancer, our network of clinics and cancer care services in North and Central Texas give you access to breast cancer treatment options at a location convenient for you. With a holistic approach to treatment and customized care plans, we help you fight breast cancer on your terms.
Breast cancer treatment can be complex and requires careful consideration to ensure you receive the most appropriate care for the type and stage of your condition. Your oncology team will discuss treatments in detail, including possible side effects and long-term considerations that may influence your decision. Whichever treatment you receive, you can trust that you will receive it from a compassionate team that has your needs top of mind. You can find the support you need to help navigate the treatment process, recovery and beyond.
Radiation therapy for breast cancer
Radiation therapy targets breast cancer cells with high-energy radiation. It is often used in combination with other treatments to ensure cancer cells have been destroyed.
Radiation therapy is often combined with lumpectomy in women who have early-stage breast cancers. Women with advanced cancers and inflammatory breast cancer may need radiation therapy after a mastectomy. It may also be used in women with metastatic breast cancer to treat symptoms or cancers that have spread to the bones or other areas of the body.
How many radiation treatments you have and how often you have them will depend on the type of radiation you receive. There are two types typically used to treat breast cancer:
Hormone therapy for breast cancer
Hormone therapy targets cancers affected by hormones, referred to as hormone receptor-positive breast cancers. Hormone therapy works to prevent the body from producing hormones that cause cancer to grow or by blocking how effective they are.
As part of the cancer staging process, doctors test cancer cells to see if they have receptors for proteins that attract or bind to hormones. If they do, your cancer is considered hormone receptor-positive. If they do not, you have a hormone receptor-negative cancer and will not receive hormone therapy.
There are several types of hormone therapy. Some may reduce hormone production, while others block hormones from reaching receptors on cancer cells.
Immunotherapy for breast cancer
Immunotherapy stimulates your immune system and helps it fight cancer.
Your immune system is usually good at identifying foreign invaders to your body, such as infections, and can even identify and attack some cancer cells. However, other cancer cells have properties that make them harder for your immune system to identify. Immunotherapies help your immune system better find those cells.
Although cancer researchers have helped develop many immunotherapies, the only type currently used to treat breast cancer is an immune checkpoint inhibitor.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors
Normally, immune checkpoints are proteins that help stop the immune system from mistakenly attacking healthy cells. However, some breast cancer cells can take control of these checkpoints, which prevents your immune system from attacking the cancer. Immune checkpoint inhibitors block this from happening, allowing the immune system to better fight the cancer.
Currently, immune checkpoint inhibitors are often combined with chemotherapy to treat metastatic, triple-negative breast cancer with certain biomarkers and other types of cancer that can’t be treated with surgery.
Breast cancer clinical trials
Baylor Scott & White Research Institute (BSWRI) conducts studies exploring potentially new medications and therapies for nearly a dozen different cancer types. Trials are currently underway at select Baylor Scott & White facilities in North and Central Texas.
