Why Radiation's Necessary

Radiation is an important and often necessary form of anti-cancer therapy because it is able to reduce the risk of recurrence after surgery. Although it's quite possible that your surgeon removed all the cancer, breast cancer surgery cannot guarantee that every last cancer cell has been removed from your body.

Individual cancer cells are too small to be felt and seen at surgery or detected by testing. Any cells that remain after surgery can grow and eventually form a lump or show up as an abnormality on a test, such as a mammogram.

No one who has surgery for breast cancer wants to see cancer ever again. You want to do whatever is reasonable to increase your chances of being cancer-free. Radiation therapy is an effective treatment to help you try to achieve that goal.

Research has shown that women who receive radiation after lumpectomy are more likely to live longer and remain cancer-free longer than women who don't get radiation. In one large study, women who didn't get radiation after lumpectomy were shown to have a 40% greater risk of the cancer coming back in the same breast. Other research has shown that even women with very small cancers (one centimeter or smaller) benefit from radiation after lumpectomy.