port their breasts are more sensitive.-Slight skin discoloration or thickening may occur.-Radiation does not affect the immune system response-Sometimes radiation can cause cancer. This depends on age and dosage.-People age nineteen and younger are at the highest risk of radiation induced cancer. After thirty five, the risk is tiny.-The risk of radiation induced-induced malignancy increases with dosage, but only from 300 to 1000 rads of radiation. The risk decreases as dose increases after 1000 rads-With dosage close to 4,500 rads, the risk is negligibleRadiation therapy cannot be used on a recurrence in the breast that has already been treated this way.Most women who have had breast cancer now receive chemotherapy or hormone therapy to prevent recurrence.Systematic treatment, treatment with drugs that circulate throughout the body, are needed to reduce the risk of cancer spreading to other parts of the body.Systematic treatment reduces the risk of recurrence by one third/Systematic treatment must begin immediately after surgery, to reduces likelihood of recurrence and to combat cancer spread.Systematic treatment also combats cancers which have already spread but are too subtle to be detected yet.Chemotherapy and hormone treatment are the two most common methods of systematic treatment.Which patients should receive chemotherapy is generally determined by these factors.-the size of the tumor-whether the tumor was in situ or invasive-whether the tumor has hormone receptors-whether the tumor has spread to the lymph nodes-whether you are pre-menopausal or post-menopausal at the time the tumor appearedchemotherapy works best in pre-menopausal womenhormone therapy works best in post-menopausal women, especially if their tumors had hormone receptorshowever, chemotherapy is useful in post-menopausal women as well, together with hormone therapy.Hormone therapy can benefit premenopausal women together with chemotherapyFor infiltrating cancers, ch...
