Breast cancer patients may not need surgery if new treatment proves successful

Scottish scientists say surgery for breast cancer patients could soon be a thing of the past - if a new ultrasound technique proves successful.

A team at Dundee University found an imaging method to be as accurate as an MRI scan - meaning doctors could see whether or not cancer cells remain post chemotherapy.

Professor Andrew Evans led the research.

"About 40% of women who get given chemotherapy treatment upfront, the tumour completely disappears," he said.

"But we can't prove that until we do the operation and taken the area away.

"We hope in the future imaging may be accurate enough that we can say we think the tumour's gone.

"If these trials are successful to show that there's no cancer left there, potentially in the future some women with breast cancer wouldn't need an operation.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, with around 4,700 women in Scotland being diagnosed and over 1,000 people in Scotland losing their lives to the disease each year.

The study, funded by Breast Cancer Now, found that combining shear wave elastography (SWE) with standard ultrasound (US) accurately measured how cancers respond to chemotherapy given before surgery (neo-adjuvant chemotherapy) and could help reduce the extent of patients’ surgery.

It is also hoped that shear wave elastography with ultrasound could prove a faster, cheaper and more widely-accessible method for the NHS compared to MRI, with results in less than five minutes.

Dr Kotryna Temcinaite, Research Communications Manager at Breast Cancer Now, which funded the study, said:

“We know that having breast cancer surgery can have a significant emotional and physical impact on many patients and there are risks and side effects to surgery. This is a really promising finding that could in future help some patients avoid more extensive breast cancer surgery.

“As more effective treatments become available, this new method could even help some patients to avoid having surgery altogether, which could have a major impact on their quality of life.

“New imaging methods like this will be vital in helping clinicians and patients to decide on the most effective course of treatment, which in turn will help to achieve the best possible quality of life after treatment for breast cancer patients.

“We would encourage anyone who has questions or concerns about breast imaging or breast cancer surgery to speak to their breast care nurse or call our free Helpline on 0808 800 6000.”

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