New treatment uses radiation alternative.(brachytherapy)(Brief Article)

2002 MAR 7 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Learning she had breast cancer was bad enough for 40-year-old Marian Norton. Almost as troubling was the burden of 6 weeks of radiation treatment.

The mother of two young children didn't like the idea of exposing her entire breast to radiation and feared the disruption and mental anguish involved with more than a month of therapy.

"It was the time involved, and trying to be a mom and trying to have a normal life," said Norton of Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

Then she learned about brachytherapy, a radiation alternative more commonly associated with prostate cancer treatment. A few breast cancer doctors have been using it as a follow-up to lumpectomy - removal of only the tumor - and recent studies show it's effective.

Unlike standard external radiation, brachytherapy works from the inside, with radioactive "seeds" injected into the breast at the site of the excised tumor, where cancer is most likely to recur.

Best of all, breast brachytherapy requires about 4 or 5 days of treatment instead of six weeks or more. And Norton, like about 70% of U.S. women diagnosed with breast cancer, was eligible because her tumor was small and caught early.

She had the procedure last May.