rual bleeding, should be reported to a doctor as right away. Even if the doctor removes all the cancer that can be seen at the time of the operation, the patient may be given radiation therapy, chemotherapy, or hormone therapy after surgery to try to kill any cancer cells that may be left. Therapy given after an operation when there are no cancer cells that can be seen is called adjuvant therapy. Biological therapy tries to get the body to fight cancer. It uses materials made by the body or made in a laboratory to boost, direct, or restore the body's natural defenses against disease. Biological therapy is sometimes called biological response modifier therapy or immunotherapy. This treatment is currently only being given in clinical trials. Bone marrow transplantation is another type of treatment that is being studied in clinical trials also. Sometimes breast cancer becomes resistant to treatment with radiation therapy or chemotherapy. Very high doses of chemotherapy may then be used to treat the cancer. Because the high doses of chemotherapy can destroy the bone marrow, marrow is taken from the bones before treatment. The marrow is then frozen and the patient is given high-dose chemotherapy with or without radiation therapy to treat the cancer. The marrow that was taken out is then thawed and given back to the patient through a needle inserted into a vein to replace the marrow that was destroyed. This type of transplant is called an autologous transplant. If the marrow that is given is taken from another person, the transplant is called an allogeneic transplant. Another type of autologous transplant is called a peripheral blood stem cell transplant. The patient's blood is passed through a machine that removes the stem cells which are immature cells from which all blood cells develop and then the blood is returned back to the patient. This procedure is called leukapheresis it usually takes 3 or 4 hours to complete. The stem cells are tre...
