Breast Cancer Breast Cancer Treatment

Breast Cancer Treatment Side Effects Come Center Stage

By Christine Haran

While there's never a good time to get breast cancer, women diagnosed today tend to have less debilitating treatment experiences than women who were diagnosed 10 years ago. While one might assume the change is due to gentler therapies, chemotherapy for breast cancer, for example, has actually gotten more aggressive.

"The improvements in quality of life are due to two things," says John Glaspy, MD, medical director of the Oncology Center at the University of California, Los Angeles Jonsson Cancer Center. "Number one, there's a greater focus on quality of life, and number two, the advent of several breakthrough drugs that have helped us to better manage patients experiencing side effects."

Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy, of all cancer treatment, is most feared for its toxicity, and the most disabling side effect has traditionally been nausea and vomiting. The experience is so ingrained that some women who have undergone chemotherapy recall anticipating nausea or gagging at the sight of the hospital where they received their chemo, or even at the sight of their oncology nurse.

Today, however, new medications have made such difficult experiences increasingly usual. "New serotonin-based anti-nausea drugs have revolutionized oncology," Dr. Glaspy says, "making vomiting rare and nausea less common among women being treated for breast cancer."

Chemo-related fatigue is also often better managed today, though women are still likely to be more tired than usual. Women with very low red blood counts may be prescribed a drug that stimulates red blood cell production and thus helps with anemia-related fatigue. Many women will not have such low blood counts, however. And not all chemo-related fatigue is related to anemia. These women are often advised to cope with their fatigue by doing moderate exercise, even just walking around the block, and cutting down on some of their activities.

"Women need to pace themselves and prioritize their time," says Jean M. Lynn, MPH, an oncology-certified nurse and director of the Breast Care Center at George Washington University in Washington, DC. "I always look at breast cancer as a part-time job for six months. You can't continue doing everything else you were doing. If you try to do everything, you'll just crash."

Other side effects for which treatments are available are infections, such as yeast infections, and local therapies for mouth sores and mucositis, which is an inflammation of the mucous lining in the mouth. There are also effective medications for digestive problems, such as diarrhea and constipation, which may result from chemotherapy and the anti-nausea drugs taken during treatment.

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