VIDEO: Early breast cancer screening may eliminate need for more aggressive treatments

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Early screening helps us detect the cancers when they're much smaller. So lower stage of cancer has a better prognosis in terms of survival, as well as recurrence. So the smaller tumors, especially in triple-negative breast cancers and HER2 positive breast cancers, you're able to omit chemotherapy if they meet a certain size cutoff, and it's usually less than five millimeters. So early screening helps us detect cancers that are smaller so that we can avoid more treatments in certain cases.

Then with smaller tumors, patients are candidates for breast conserving surgery. When the tumor size is larger, in some cases we may have to do mastectomy. Also, early screening also reduces the time of any metastasis to the lymph node. When there is lymph node metastasis, it may involve more treatment. So early screening does help us attack the cancer much sooner. And if they meet certain size cutoffs, we're able to eliminate more aggressive treatments.