This is an automatically translated article.
The article was written by Specialist Doctor II Phung Thi Phuong Chi - Oncology Center, Vinmec Central Park International General Hospital.Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers in women. For women who are unfortunate enough to have this disease, cancer treatment more or less affects your health and fertility. Wondering if breast cancer treatments have serious side effects?
1. Health effects after breast cancer treatment
After breast cancer treatment, women under 45 years of age may face a number of health problems such as the possibility of early menopause, sexual problems, and fertility problems.Breast cancer treatment options can include surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and estrogen-blocking drugs. In premenopausal women (those who have not yet reached natural menopause), certain types of treatment can lead to early menopause symptoms. In addition, these treatments can also increase your risk of a number of long-term health problems:
Heart health : Certain types of chemotherapy or drugs that block estrogen can increase your risk of the disease. heart or thromboembolic events in women. In addition to the careful monitoring of your doctor during treatment, you should improve your lifestyle to reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as adopting a nutritious heart-healthy diet that includes fruits and vegetables. plants, vegetables, grains, dairy products and proteins. In addition, you should limit alcohol, maintain weight, exercise daily. Bone health: Cancer treatments that lower estrogen levels may increase the risk of osteoporosis. To reduce your risk of developing osteoporosis, you should get your bone mineral density tested to know the status of your bone health. In addition, you should build a healthy lifestyle such as increasing calcium and vitamin D intake, exercising regularly, and limiting alcohol intake.
Sức khỏe của phụ nữ sau khi điều trị có nhiều thay đổi
2. Effects on reproductive function after breast cancer treatment
2.1. Breast cancer treatment causes menopausal symptoms
Normally, menopause occurs when the ovaries stop producing estrogen, but some forms of breast cancer treatment, such as chemotherapy and estrogen blocking drugs, can affect the amount of estrogen in the body by suppressing estrogen. ovary, direct estrogen suppression or due to obligatory removal of ovarian function during treatment. This leads to early menopause symptoms in premenopausal women.Chemotherapy: It is possible to completely or incompletely lose ovarian function, cause your menstrual cycle to become irregular or even stop your period. After chemotherapy, you may also experience hot flashes, vaginal dryness, or urinary problems and trouble sleeping. Drugs that block estrogen: Some breast cancers are dependent on the hormone estrogen. A woman's tumor cells have receptors that, when combined with estrogen, stimulate tumor growth. Women with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer can take tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor to stop the cancer from progressing or coming back. These drugs help block the action of estrogen in breast tumors or in the body and sometimes cause menopausal symptoms.
2.2. Having sex after breast cancer treatment
After breast cancer treatment, women often have psychological concerns about sex issues such as: Worry about cancer affecting sex life; Feeling sad, guilty, low self-esteem after treatment (feeling that the body is no longer attractive as before); Feeling pain from vaginal dryness during sex....Give yourself time to adjust. Breast cancer treatment is a long process, it changes lives both mentally and physically and takes a lot of energy. Therefore, you should share with relatives, partners or doctors to have a reasonable solution.
2.3. Is it possible to have children after breast cancer treatment?
Cancer treatment with chemotherapy and radiation treatments can affect egg quality. Therefore, for women who have breast cancer but still want to have children after treatment, doctors will advise fertility preservation: Egg freezing. After the treatment is stable and health conditions allow, a woman can give birth by in vitro fertilization using thawed eggs.Currently, there are two ways to preserve fertility for women: storing mature eggs or ovarian tissue. Before storing eggs, the patient must use ovarian stimulation medication. Your doctor will advise you whether taking medications against the background of your cancer and the time it takes to induce ovulation could make your cancer worse for you to consider before making a decision.
With the method of storing ovarian tissue, the patient does not have to use drugs, only cutting and storing at the same time as cancer surgery, so it does not affect the disease.
At Vinmec Times City International Hospital, eggs and egg tissue have been stored for a number of cancer patients, including 1 case of ovarian tissue storage for a 22-year-old patient with cervical cancer. uterus . The Vinmec method that uses freezing eggs, as well as embryos and sperm, is currently vitrified. The great advantage of this method over classical methods is the fast freezing time, no formation of ice crystals inside the cells. Therefore, oocytes are protected more safely, when thawed, they will have a high survival rate. This is one of the safe and highly effective methods currently used in cryopreservation of eggs as well as embryos and sperm.
Breast cancer screening is the best way to detect and treat breast cancer early. The breast cancer screening package at Vinmec International General Hospital helps to detect breast cancer early even when there are no symptoms, thereby having an appropriate treatment regimen, minimizing the effects on breast cancer. health and fertility after treatment.
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