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New breast cancer developments 

About Dr Sajid Sheikh

There is a promising new development for the hundreds of New Zealand women who face breast cancer every year. 

Patients could soon be saved from the devastating effect of the surgeon's scalpel, with a new treatment that was outlined at the Australasian Royal College of Surgeons conference in Christchurch. 

Invasive surgery is currently the best way of removing breast cancer, but doctors in the United States are developing new techniques. 

Radio frequencies and probes are used to either burn or freeze cancerous cells, and so is ultrasound, better known in New Zealand for monitoring pregnancies. 

Professor Clive Morgan from the Mayo Medical School in Minnesota says these procedures are unlikely to reduce the mortality rate of people with breast cancer, but would prevent breast removal in many cases. 

"The beam of the ultrasound is focussed right on the tumour within the breast... in doing that, you can raise the temperature of the tissue there to a temperature which destroys the cells," he says. 

The American women trailing the new treatment are also getting chemotherapy, and the Mayo Clinic says while it is early days yet, so far in every case they have been able to remove the cancer without having to remove the breast as well. 

Surgeons in NZ say they are watching the overseas techniques with interest and already trailing some new developments. 

Christchurch is about to join Auckland in a pilot of a procedure called sentinel biopsy, which monitors women instead of automatically removing underarm lymph nodes, all to reduce sides effects. 

That technique, if the trials work, could be available in hospitals in NZ within a few years. 
Published on Aug 28, 2002 
ONE News sourced from TVNZ, RNZ, Reuters and AAP