If you’ve been treated for early breast cancer your overall risk for recurrence is small, a new large, long term study finds. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says these risks can be pinned to how the primary cancer was treated.
Nelson: If they receive radiotherapy there was a greater chance of breast cancer and lung cancer, these are known risks. If they had the hormonal treatment there was a little bit of increased risk of uterine cancer but it also reduce the risk of the contralateral breast cancer. Again that's already known and that chemotherapy probably had a little bit of an increased risk of leukemia. All those things are already known what was interesting was that the additional risk was not very much so these women can likely focus not on other cancers, they're at the same risk as everybody else, but focus on the rest of their lives.  :34
So overall this study provides reassurance, Nelson concludes. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.