For the past six years, my colleagues and I have been conducting a clinical trial on a new type of radiation therapy to treat early-stage breast cancer. The treatment is called stereotactic partial-breast radiation.
During phase one of this trial, we found the treatment to be just as safe as traditional radiation while reducing the treatment time from six weeks to mere days.
Shorter, effective treatments are critical for busy patients like Leslie LeBlanc, a dental hygienist and resident of Arlington, Texas. She was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer four years ago, when her daughter had just started college and her son was in high school. Mrs. LeBlanc couldn’t drop everything for treatment. With this new therapy, she didn’t have to.
Watch the video to hear Mrs. LeBlanc share her experience in her own words.
A recent phase one clinical trial at UT Southwestern successfully decreased early-stage breast cancer treatments from nearly two months to just days. The new approach hopes to ease the burden for cancer patients who are already coping with an upsetting diagnosis.
UT Southwestern’s Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center is the only site in Texas and among only a few in the world to offer this new treatment to early-stage breast cancer patients. Stereotactic partial-breast radiation is delivered with the latest-generation Cyberknife, one of several technologies housed in UT Southwestern’s newly opened Radiation Oncology facility.
