New treatment heralds breakthrough for breast cancer patients. Times

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This times report should be of interest and very encouraging
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/new-treatment-heralds-breakthrough-for-breast-cancer-patients-c2js2kjjr

Great news. I believe 1 in 8 women get breast cancer - it's welcome to hear of progress.

This has been around for some time. It is a shame it has not been made more widely available.

Yes Melroses I read that, but after I'd posted. Still good to remind women who can then demand that treatment if suitable and then it has to become widely available. It saves money and stress. Sometimes our healthcare system moves so slowly

They were talking about it on Times Radio this morning, and apparently it is available in the hospitals where it was first developed (London I think).

It puts me in mind of my next door neighbour who had a lumpectomy and struggled with radiotherapy so much they ended up doing it less often and for a longer time period. This would be a real help for people like her.

One of the reasons they put forward for the slowness of progress was that radiotherapy departments see a lot of women with breast cancer so it would need a massive change to the system, as well as the cost of new equipment (and presumably training) for use in the operating theatres. But surely this would free radiotherapy up for other cancer patients and reduce the spend in the long terms

That is brilliant. Thank you for sharing

I hadn’t heard about this before. Thanks for putting this out there.

@Melroses I think you're absolutely right, costs initially, yes, but all that time and stress would be saved for women. In the end, more efficient and therefore cheaper

I haven't heard of this treatment before. Thanks for sharing.

This sounds really important for women. Thanks for posting.

There’s been some dramatic changes to breast cancer radiotherapy recently. The one outlined above would be unsuitable for someone like me, who had to have a full mastectomy, but my radiotherapy afterwards was also done in a new way that was only brought in this spring. It was a lower dose and done over five consecutive days, which studies had shown was just as effective as the old method, but far easier on the patient.
Long, drawn out, radiotherapy is now a thing of the past.

Good news. It's more than a decade since my Mum had breast cancer and radiotherapy but I do remember a few women who cut short the treatment as they were so sore and uncomfortable.