Treating chest lymph nodes in patients with early breast cancer improves survival without increasing side effects

Giving radiation therapy to the lymph nodes located behind the breast bone and above the collar bone to patients with early breast cancer improves overall survival without increasing side effects. This new finding ends the uncertainty about whether the beneficial effect of radiation therapy in such patients was simply the result of irradiation of the breast area, or whether it treated cancer cells in the local lymph nodes as well, according to research presented at the 2013 European Cancer Congress. Read more here.