Metastatic Breast Cancer

Despite treatment, breast cancer sometimes recurs. If the cancer reappears in the breast, it is a local recurrence. Breast cancer cells can also travel through the lymph system or through the blood to reach other parts of the body, such as the bones.

This is metastatic breast cancer. Although tumors appear in distant sites--such as the liver, lungs, brain, lymph nodes, or bones--it is not a new cancer, it is a recurrence of the original breast cancer.

In some cases, the breast cancer has already metastasized, or spread, by the time a women discovers that she has breast cancer.

Metastatic breast cancer is generally seen as an incurable disease, but new treatments may put your cancer in remission and give you a good quality of life for many years.

Many women who were treated elsewhere for their primary breast cancer come to SCCA if their disease metastasizes.

If you have metastatic breast cancer, SCCA can offer you new medical procedures and treatments, as well as access to clinical trials, that your community doctor may not know about.

No one at SCCA will tell you that a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer is not serious, but there is hope.

You may want to read about treatment for metastatic breast cancer or about living with metastatic disease.

In the news

Breast cancer oncologist Dr. Julie Gralow, who sees patients at UW Medical Center and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, was recently a much-sought-after expert by the news media to comment on Elizabeth Edwards announcement about her breast cancer recurrence and metastisis to her bones. Mrs. Edwards is the wife of presidential candidate John Edwards and was actively involved in the 2004 and 2008 campaigns.

On the national level, Gralow did an extensive live interview on the PBS program "NewsHour." Here is a link to the NewsHour Web site. You can watch streaming video or listen to audio of the Edwards story. 

Locally, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer interviewed a patient of Dr. Gralow's who has survived several years with metastasized breast cancer, adding evidence to statements by Mrs. Edwards and doctors that, although incurable, breast cancer that has spread to the bone can be treated and that patients can live fulfilling lives. For this interview, click here.

August 2007