In: Nursing
Kelly is a 52-year-old Caucasian who had a hysterectomy at 46 because of profound endometriosis. Shortly after her surgery she began on estrogen replacement therapy. She has just recently discovered she has invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast. She is still considering her options. The initial TNM status is T2N4M1.
a. Explain the relationship between estrogen replacement therapy and the development of breast cancer.
b. Metastasis is a great concern. Discuss the common locations for metastasis of breast cancer and how the cancer spreads to each location.
a) Estrogen help the development of normal breast cells and higher lifetime exposure leads to breast cancer.
Estrogen replacement therapy can increase the risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer too. Estrogen replacement therapy if it took more than 10 years , it wil create the higher risk of breast cancer. In this treatment , the medication is given to replace the estrogen that should stop during the menopause.
By the estrogen replacement therapy the so called bioidentical and natural hormones are used to get refief from menopause effects but these hormones leads to the condition in long term that manmade kind of thing enhance the breast cancer.
b) Metastasis is the process in which type the cancer can spread from the location it begins to the different part of the body.
The common locations for the matasytasis of breast cancer are bones , brain , liver , lung .
The cancer spread to these locations by growing and invading the near by tissue and than they start moving along with the walls of the blood vessels and other transport system like lymph vessels etc .
And than through this circulation system they spread throughout the body . They start to stop the blood vessels at the specific locations and than destruct its wall and move to other nearby tiisues. The growth is continus untill the tumor like structure will develope .
This will happen in a cyclic way and allow the tumor to spread throughout the body to the specific locations .
This is the whole mechanism how the metastasis take place .