treatment

My sister was found (in November 2000) to have breast cancer which had spread to the liver.  She has undergone chemotherapy ONLY, and her last report from her oncologist is excellent, based on a bone marrow test and MRI.  I am still confused as to why no surgery was performed.  Is this common?  She appears to be cancer free as of this time, according to her doctor.  It seems almost too good to be true. Any information on this course of treatment?  Thank you.

[CCF-RN,MSN-rf]

Dear babyjane:  When breast cancer is diagnosed as having spread to other organs, the focus of care is on the metastatic disease.  Since surgery will not address the liver disease, chemotherapy is given because that will address breast cancer that is anywhere in her body.  Surgery would only delay chemotherapy if it were given.  It sounds as though your sister has had a good response to chemotherapy.  This is good.  I hope this good response will last a long time.

[babyjane]

Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly.  Your answer makes a lot of sense.  One note to anyone seeing this.  My sister had a mammogram in January 2000 during a routine physical, but nothing suspicious was found, just a few "calcium deposits."  The cancer first showed up on her liver.  She had a gall bladder attack and surgery was recommended.  Her surgeon "looked around" at other organs during the surgery and noticed some "spots" on her liver.  He had them biopsied and, as he suspected, they were cancerous.  It took almost a month and many tests to find her primary.  The reason it had not shown up on the mammogram was because the cancer cell was BEHIND the calcium deposits.  It was just divine intervention that she had the gall bladder attack.  Otherwise, the cancer might never have been found until too late.