Stage 4 breast cancer survival rates improving; is surgery still the better option?

The fight against breast cancer among women has a welcome development as findings of a new study show that the survival rate of those with stage 4 breast cancer has gone up. This is particularly true for women who went for the initial breast surgery.

The report, which was published online in the JAMA Surgery journal, took into account a large number of data consisting of more than 20,000 women, according to a Science Daily article.

In the past several years, women diagnosed with the disease has turned to drugs and radiation treatments that are now available and more effective than ever before. The result of this is less number of stage 4 breast cancer patients undergoing a surgery procedure. The study found out that those who had surgery dropped from 67.8 percent in 1988 to just 25.1 percent in 2011.

However, the results of the study also revealed that stage 4 breast cancer patients who opted for surgery survived longer compared to those who did not. The difference is about a median of 28 months versus 19 months and, furthermore, the researchers also found out that among those who survived 10 years, 9.6 percent had chosen to have surgery while 2.9 percent opted otherwise.

This has raised a question on whether there is a need to recommend surgery as a better option in improving stage 4 breast cancer survival rates, wrote  the Washington Post.

"Maybe we need to revisit this question of surgery," said Mary C. Schroeder, an assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Iowa and one of the authors of the study, told the Washington Post. "It may not be right for all women, but it may be better for some women than it was in 1995."

But, the researchers were also quick to caution that it may not be advisable to make a sudden change of treatment recommendation for those with stage 4 breast cancer. They said that it is still premature at this stage to say whether surgery could really help women live longer.

According to them, randomized clinical trials and prospectively enrolled registries will prove to be significant in the understanding of the underlying causal relationship between the receipt of surgery and improved survival, the UPI wrote.

"A large benefit for many women with stage IV breast cancer with surgery to the intact primary tumor is unlikely, especially as an ever-increasing array of more potent and targeted drugs may be able to provide better control or even eradication of systemic disease," they added.