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Successes in breast implants provide hope for survivors

Tuesday, November 1st, 2022 05:40 | By
Sample breast implants.
Sample breast implants. PHOTO/Courtesy.

Breast cancer surgeons now say it is possible for a woman who had her breast chopped off because of cancer to get it back and even have it looking better than the original.

A combination of innovations, new medical therapies, precision surgical tools and medicines are at play.

“There is hope for patients and survivors of breast cancer, a disease mythically believed to be a death sentence,” the specialists stated during a session with health journalists ahead of the forthcoming Kenya International Cancer Conference (KICC) this month.

They can be healed ‘almost’ completely, Dr  Karen Mbaabu, a breast cancer surgeon and Dr Andrew Odhiambo, a medical oncologist; Prof Nicholas Abinya and Dr Catherine Nyongesa from the same field said.

According to Dr Mbaabu, a breast cancer surgeon, Kenya has made great strides and now, the country has capacity to prolong lives of survivors.

“In Kenya now, we are able to offer either breast conserving surgery - where we maintain the majority of the breast tissue and indeed form it into a normal looking breast - or a better appearing breast,” she said during a media roundtable at the Nairobi Hospital.

In addition to this, surgeons are currently able to build new breasts or recreate them for patients who have had to lose breasts because of surgery.

However, she urged women and men to go for regular screening to give opportunity for early detection of the disease.

“What we really want to come out strongly and say, is that when breast cancer is picked up early, there are a lot more cure options that are available to us now- surgically,” she said.

From diagnosis, Mbaabu revealed that surgeons now are able to pick up small breast cancers fairly early. This, she explained, is due to an improvement in an array of technologies at their disposal.

“While using the radiology equipment, for instance, we are able to pick up areas of abnormalities in the breast, which are yet to present as a lump,” she said.

The surgeons are also able to assess or take a sample of the affected area using medical tools such as stereotactic biopsy. This is where the area that looks abnormal, and has not presented as a lump is taken out.

Based on this though, the surgeons are also faced with the challenge of operating on those areas which are not able to be easily felt.

“That’s where we have been able to deploy things like the use of magnetic tracers, small magnetic seeds in short form, magseeds,” Mbaabu said, explaining that the seeds, small medical magnetic seeds, the size of a grain of rice are introduced into the breast, and guided by a metallic gadget before surgery so that they can pick the small cancerous cells.

Mbaabu said they are able then to know exactly where the cancer is and eliminate it by injecting new non-affected cells drawn from the same person.

“We are then able to completely remove it. This is primarily what plastic surgeons use to make a person look attractive, and now we are using it through a technology called autologous transplant,” she added. This method involves transplantation of an individual’s own cells which are collected, stored and then given back to the same person after treatment to kill the cancer.

There are lots of developments in surgical techniques, and most of them according to Mbaabu, are helping to minimise loss of blood during surgery, and hasten recovery turnaround time after procedures.

“So all these are within the realm of our expertise, and we are really encouraging people to take it up, and just to be aware of their own breast health,” she said.

Odhiambo said it’s an exciting moment in the health field in that for breast cancer now, there are many new treatments that were not there before.

“We are able to give almost lifetime solutions to those patients who were diagnosed with advanced breast cancer before that might have already spread out of the breast to other parts of the body, using these new and available technologies and medication, some of them called targeted therapy,” he said.

Odhiambo also specialises on cancers of the digestive system, and breast. He said using the new treatment therapies; it enables the specialists to keep breast cancer patients alive for many years.

“Sometimes these medicines could be available in a tablet that a patient can take home, and may be they can come, see a doctor once a month, and are able to live relatively a normal life, and yet they are surviving from Stage Four breast cancer,” he said, noting that these particular drugs have also been available in the country for a long time.

“We have been using them, but we are also getting newer and newer medications like radiotherapy,” he added.

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