After mastectomy/treatment question

Deamo1

After your mastectomy and treatment how does the Dr check to see if they have gotten all your cancer? What tests do they run?

Icietla

The Pathology Lab will check the margins of the tissue removed from your mastectomy sites to make sure those outer limits are "clean" (undiseased). If any other type/s of breast cancer were to be found within that tissue, that might change the recommendations given for your treatment. Coincident with your surgery, some lymph nodes will be collected, and those will also be evaluated for your Pathology Report.

As to whether circulating tumor cells in circulation can be reliably detected, you should ask your Oncologist. It is believed that even very small invasive cancers are capable of shedding CTCs.

On your first visit, blood testing will give some baseline readings that will help about evaluating your subsequent blood test results.

https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/71/topics/860466?page=1

https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/78/topics/859993?page=1

mustlovepoodles

I'm 2-1/2 years post chemo and BMX. I see my BS and MO separately every 6 months. The BS always does an ultasound of my entire chest and axilla. The MO does bloodwork annually to make sure the letrozole isnt causing as by harm. I asked him about tumor markers, but he said he doesn't use them for people with early stage cancers because of the high rate of inconclusive results. If you get a result that's a little outside the norm, you have to do a bunch more tests to determine whether that initial result is a true problem or just an aberration. In the end, the vast majority of these tests will be some version of normal and it needlessly scares the bejeebers out of the patient. He prefers to wait & see and i agree with that approach. Im sure he would be more aggressive if I had been stage 3 or 4.

Deamo1

Thank you for the info all!