breast cancer

[chaton]

good day!

i will shortly be having a mastectomy and i was told that it would be followed by hormonal therapy.
why is it necessary to have a lymph node dissection if we already know the therapy?
does a lymph node dissection have diagnostic or therapeutic value?
what would change if lymph nodes were found to contain cancer cells?

thank you

[katarina777]

The lymph node dissection is done to find out if your breast cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. If it has, this is diagnostically important, but more so, the cancerous nodes need to be surgically removed and often the surgeon will take out all of the lymph nodes.
in terms of 'diagnostically important', there is a greater risk of your cancer spreading, or having spread to other places in your body if positive lymph nodes were found. Aside from surgically removing them, your oncologist may consider chemotherapy for you, and perhaps even radiation for extra insurance. if you had a lumpectomy your surgery would automatically be followed by radiation but with early stage cancer that does not involve lymph nodes, this is usually not necessary and neither is chemotherapy.

When you are fist diagnosed with bc, treatment will be as aggressive as needed usually because it is at this time when treatment is most important and effective in doing all there can be done to prevent such things as recurrence and metastasis. I hope this helps a little?