Baystate Health doctors highlight breast cancer warning signs, treatment advances

Today is Go Pink Day at 22 News as we come together to recognize Breast Cancer Awareness Month. You'll notice our studio is lit up in pink and our 22 News team is wearing pink to help raise awareness. And joining us tonight are Dr. Prathana Bhardwaj and Dr. Nicole Keller from Bay State to talk about breast cancer and what women should know to protect your health. Thank you both for joining us tonight. And of course we'll start first, obviously we talked earlier about some breast cancer, but what are some of the warning signs, Nicole I think you were talking about this that people should look out for yeah so as far as warning signs symptoms i think it's first important to realize that a lot of times we're catching breast cancer on mammograms like we're catching breast cancer when it's in its millimeters before we even notice a clinical sign but clinical signs you can look out for is one we all kind of think about is a mass or a lump in your breast that is new other signs is sometimes what we call nipple discharge especially if it's one-sided if it's bloody we're looking at changes in your skin like if you have a little dimpling or puckering of your skin that's new and also just looking at the nipple if your nipple areolar complex looks different if it's retracted that is definitely something that you should see a doctor for and get worked up and talking about those warning signs obviously there's multiple different types so it might think there's multiple different types of breast cancer can you just briefly share some of those different ones uh definitely there's lots of different types of breast cancer some are more aggressive than others some respond to hormones that a female body naturally produces such as estrogen progesterone others do not respond to any of those hormones so that kind of guides how we are able to treat these cancers these cancers some are more aggressive than others and some present when they've already progressed past the breast into other parts of the body so it really does dictate how we manage it and then when somebody is diagnosed with breast cancer one of their first questions besides treatment may be the survival rate obviously there's different stages, but what are some factors that might impact their survival rate? So if it's localized, meaning restricted to the breast, survival rates that we look at are excellent. Five-year survival rates is more than 99 percent. If it is regionally involved, meaning if there are lymph nodes that are involved, your five-year survival rate could be approximately about 85 to 90 percent. So whether lymph nodes are involved or not becomes really important. And for those who have widely metastatic disease meaning if it has metastasized outside of the breast and the lymph nodes in different organs the five-year survival rate is currently about 30 to 35 percent and talking about treatment how has treatment what are the different types and how has it evolved over the years i think starting from surgery i think we went from really extensive surgeries to lumpectomies in terms of you know the treatments we have chemotherapy was routinely given for a lot of individuals who had lymph nodes that were positive if they were hormonally driven cancers That has changed. We are in the era of less is more, but also our treatments are more and more focused towards how best can patients tolerate it. So yeah, different types of treatments available, but it is a combination of surgery, maybe radiation, maybe consideration of chemotherapy depending upon the type of cancer that you have, and hormone blocking treatments for hormonally driven cancers are typically considered. There's also increasing availability of targeted treatments that are additional adjuncts to what we're already doing. Well, thank you, Dr. Bhardwaj and Dr. Keller. Thank you for joining us. This information is important, obviously, and our Go Pink Day coverage continues on air, online, and on the 20 News Plus app with resources for Breast Cancer Awareness Month and beyond.