Source: Time

By Alice Park

There are paradigm shifts in how breast cancer is screened for and treated—and that’s good news for patients

Terrifying as the C word can be, breast cancer today means something very different than it did a decade ago. Doctors know more than ever about what causes cancer in the first place and when it’s best to screen for the disease as well as which cancers are more likely to spread aggressively and which may be able to be monitored and left alone. This knowledge will only grow more refined in the years to come, thanks in part to a handful of landmark studies launched this year.

Mounting evidence shows that the tendency to respond to every breast cancer with every treatment option available–surgery, chemotherapy, radiation–isn’t always necessary, takes a toll in serious side effects and rarely adds years to women’s lives. This is especially critical as doctors learn that not all lesions in the breast can spread–particularly those in Stage 0 breast cancer, or ductal carcinoma in situ–which calls into question the very idea of when a cancer really is a cancer.

“It’s very difficult to get doctors or patients to accept the fact that there is cancer that doesn’t need to be cured,” says Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. But that’s what this new understanding of cancer is pointing toward.

Thanks to a more sophisticated view of what triggers cancer in the first place, more-detailed tools like 3-D mammography and MRIs, and genetic tumor tests that can predict the course of some cancers, the treatment options for women are better than they have been–and they will continue to improve. Ultimately, the goal is a more personalized approach to the cancer that affects nearly 250,000 U.S. women a year. Because no two breast cancers are alike, the way malignancies are detected and treated should reflect that. Here’s a closer look at the three major changes shaping breast-cancer care today and down the line.

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