Word: cancer
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Instead of a mastectomy, Blaschko opted for interstitial radiation therapy -the temporary implanting of tiny bits of radioactive isotopes in and around the malignant tissue. She has had no reason to regret her decision; the lump in her breast has receded, the cancer in her lymph nodes has apparently been eradicated, and she feels so well that she has taken up cycling along with her daily swimming...
...treatment chosen by Blaschko date back to the turn of the century, when the Curies' discovery of radium made possible a radiation source compact enough to be placed within a tumor. Since then, the technique has been considerably refined and has long been used to treat certain cancers of the neck, head, vagina and other parts of the body difficult to cope with surgically. Now, U.S. doctors, confronted by 90,000 new cases of the disease a year, are showing an increased interest in the use of interstitial implants against breast cancer as well...
Growing use of the implant technique is partly a response to demand. Many women who discover that they have breast cancer are no longer willing to submit to disfiguring radical mastectomies, which involve the removal of the entire breast, underlying muscle and neighboring lymph nodes, even if they show no trace of cancer. Though mastectomies have been favored by U.S. experts as the surest route to survival in cases of breast cancer, some doctors are beginning to have doubts about them. Dr. Samuel Hellman of Harvard's Joint Center for Radiation Therapy points out that radical surgery...
Radiologists emphasize that implants are no sure cure for cancer of the breast or any other form of the disease -especially if it is detected late. But their experience suggests that the treatment is often just as effective as a mastectomy. For example, Dr. Nisar Syed, who has been doing implants at the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center since 1973, says that a year or more after their treatment, 23 out of 24 patients showed no recurrence of breast cancer. In France, where he has treated some 500 women with iridium implants since 1961, Dr. Bernard...
Some surgeons contend that there is a possibility, admittedly slight, that the radiation itself could cause future cancer. They argue, as the British Medical Journal recently said, that "cure is more important than contour." Yet Pierquin insists that for certain women between the ages of 40 and 50, there are particularly important aesthetic and psychological reasons for choosing radiation implants. As he explains it: "This is when the woman knows she is growing older and starting to lose her femininity, her power for seduction. The fact that she might undergo mutilation at this stage can be a catastrophe...