Do they bother to Treat an old lady with breast cancer?.

[littlejo67]

My mum is 79 and has been diagnosed with grade 3 invasive ductal carcinoma. She has been told that she only needs tamoxifen. This will stop it progressing. Her lymph glands look clear in ultrasound.

This seems very passive to me. Having looked up breast cancer tamoxifen seems to be a drug to prevent reoccurrence after active treatment ie. surgery, chemo and radiotherapy.

My mother has other medical conditions which make
Her a high risk for a GA. Will tamoxifen stop it spreading? Does anyone have similar experiences ?

Patients are treated on an individual basis. My grandmother was older than that, she had a mastectomy and radiotherapy.

The cancer metastasised into her spine. She had to spend the last months of her life in a nursing home.

My mother is 72. She has had two different cancers, one in each breast. Her mastectomies were 5 years apart. It has now metastesised into her liver. We don't know how long she has left, we know it will be months, but not if it will be years. She is having chemotherapy.

These are cases in different parts of the country.

OK now your mum.

Yes tamoxifen should stop it spreading. Treatment options are based on what the patient wants and how curable it is. If it cannot be cured then is it better to prolong life, which may have a poor quality, or inmprove quality of life but shorten the life. Obviously the best (other than a cure) is a good qualitiy of life for as long as possible.

There is a formula for treatment called The Nottingham Prognostic Indicator - copy and paste from Cancer help UK.

NPI = (0.2 x tumour diameter in cms) + lymph node stage + tumour grade, where

The lymph node stage can be 1 (if there are no nodes affected), 2 (if up to 3 glands are affected) or 3 (if more than 3 glands are affected)
The tumour grade is scored as either 1, 2, or 3

The formula gives scores which fall into three bands

A score of less than 4 ? this suggests a good outcome with a high chance of a cure
A score of between 4.01 to 5.4 ? this suggests an intermediate level with a moderate chance of cure
A score of more than 5.4 ? this suggests a lower chance of cure

Good luck to you and your mum, maybe you could go to an appointment with her to see why they are suggesting the current treatment.

depends on the hospital My mother was 84 and ( a retired medic herself) our local NHS were disinterested -in fact it took them nearly 3 months to even reach a diagnosis but to be fair they were honest about her age On the other hand our Local Nhs are generally disinterested per se !
Anyway being an ex-medic my mother got to the ROyal Marsden hospital in London/Sutton It was amazing and totally different in attitude from the local one -you would waste your time in the local one in comparison tbh
They were much more efficient, trained, caring and positive - if you know anyone with cancer that is the place to go to in the Uk as they specialise.

It depends. I look after a lady who was 89. She had dementia, didn't have a clue what was going on around her. Had no quality of life IMO whatsoever. But she smiled every now and again and that little glimmer of the person she used to be used to break my heart. It took us a while to notice she had a lump in her breast, it was quite big when we noticed it.

She had it removed, which I disagreed with. She spent her last days in pain.

This happened to my lovely aunty at the age of 76.She was given a mastectomy,radiotherapy and tamoxifen.She had lymph nodes involved and sadly died 2 years later from the bc spread.I often wonder whether chemo might have given her more time.