dear sir my mother is 52 years old and she had been taken to cancer institute in chennai for identify the breast cancer. After all test they had told cancer is on breast and also they told there is a cancer in back bone also. Whether cancer in back bone is curable or she will face serious problems on back bone cancer. Whether her life time will be short .please explain in detail
Hi. Very sorry to hear about your mothers' illness. Breast cancer with secondaries (metastasis) to backbone is stage 4 disease. Stage 4 disease is not curable. Its treatment includes chemotherapy &/or hormone therapy, bisphosphonates and radiation therapy if required. Breast cancer with only bone metastasis has better overall survival than breast cancer and metastasis to other organs like liver. The survival also depends upon the estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and Her2 new receptor status of the tumor. ER and/or PR positive tumors with bone only metastasis have a better median survival of about 60 months with treatment compared to 40 months for Her2 positive or ER, PR and Her2 negative patients. Median survival means that studies have shown that at the median survival time 50% of patients were alive and 50% were dead with the particular disease. You can ask the treating oncologist regarding sites of metastasis and ER, PR and Her2 status of your mothers breast cancer. I hope I have answered your question. If you have any further questions I will be more than happy to answer. Thank you for choosing Chat Doctor.