“Chemo brain” is a side effect of cancer treatment. It mostly affects patients who receive chemotherapy, but it can affect other cancer patients as well. Patients describe it as a “fog” that makes it hard to think clearly. Fortunately, “chemo brain” only affects patients while they’re being treated for cancer. Symptoms appear when treatment starts and fades after it’s finished. Though sometimes these symptoms can linger for several months or several years following treatment, most patients make a full recovery and suffer no or very minimal long-term side effects.

The long-term survival rate for women diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) or non-invasive breast cancer is excellent, according to a new study released in August. The study, “Breast Cancer Mortality After a Diagnosis of Ductal Carcinoma In Situ” revealed that this held true regardless of the type of treatment.

Medical advancements allow us to treat breast cancer more effectively than ever before. However, side effects can occur as a result of treatment. Many breast cancer patients receive some combination of surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Chemotherapy side effects can range from being a temporary nuisance to having a sustained negative impact on quality of life. As oncologists, it is our job to help patients avoid, lessen or completely eliminate such side effects.

What are Some of the Common Side Effects of Chemotherapy?

Fatigue

Chemotherapy is one of the most common treatment methods for fighting breast cancer. Typically used in combination with surgery, chemotherapy helps to kill breast cancer cells whether they reside within the breast or have managed to escape throughout the body.

Different breast cancers behave in different ways, which necessitates separate treatment guidelines to address the individual characteristics of specific types of cancer. As knowledge evolves, treatment guidelines are updated to reflect up-to-date information about breast cancer. Recently, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) published guidelines on the use of chemotherapy and targeted therapy in the treatment of patients with advanced, HER2 negative breast cancer.

So you’ve just been diagnosed with breast cancer. What does that really mean? It turns out that “breast cancer” is actually just a broad category that covers several different diseases, some of which are not that dangerous and others that are. Using new so-called “genomic” tests that analyze the different genetic mutations in breast cancers, doctors have developed a new classification system for the various types of breast cancer. Another name for this classification – which is different from the genetic tests you may have heard about — is molecular subtyping.