A new hope for early-stage breast cancer: 1-week radiotherapy, as safe and effective as longer courses

The standard is that women undergoing early-stage breast cancer treatment following their primary surgery are given 3 weeks of radiotherapy. However, now, researchers are reporting that an ultra-short 1-week radiotherapy course works just the same as the standard 3-week regimen.

“Since it’s a shorter treatment, could it work as effectively as the conventional 3-week long course on one’s health?”

“Does the 1-week radiotherapy deliver the same impact as the standard 3-week schedule?”

If these questions arise in your musings, they do not come off as a surprise, or unexpected. In fact, they are only reasonable and logical enough to be answered and backed up by well-established research studies. Read on to find out more.

Proven conclusion from FAST-Forward trial conducted in the UK: 1-week radiotherapy is just as safe and effective as the standard 3-week radiotherapy course for post-surgery early-stage breast cancer patients.

This result is coming from a multicenter, randomised, non-inferiority research study named FAST-Forward. Meaning to say, it was an assiduous research, comprehensively and thoroughly carried out at more than one medical institution (i.e., 47 radiotherapy centres, 50 referring hospitals) and among several sample groups to achieve an outcome that is as reliable and valid as possible. The aim? To verify whether the new 1-week fast-forward radiotherapy course is not inferior to the traditional 3-week course for patients diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer.

Done in the United Kingdom and involving more than 4,000 early-stage breast cancer patients who had undergone either lumpectomy or mastectomy, the pioneering FAST-Forward study evaluated the efficacy of both 1-week treatment and 3-week treatment of radiotherapy on the patients concerned.

After 5 years of follow-up, the outcome of the study, as published in The Lancet, has confirmed that a 1-week, hypofractionated or accelerated radiotherapy schedule, which is poised to deliver 5 fractions or treatments in 1 week, is equally as safe and effective as the current 3-week standard, which is given in 15 fractions over the course of 3 weeks.

“This also brings us to another key takeaway – that a shortened, or 1-week schedule of radiation therapy reduces the risk of breast cancer recurrence, similar to the standard 3-week radiotherapy, without any significant increase in the side effects.” said Dr Jasmin, a consultant radiation oncologist at Beacon Hospital.

Suffice to say, as far as adjuvant treatment for breast cancer at its early stage is concerned, a 1-week instead of 3-week long radiotherapy session should indeed, suffice.

Nonetheless, it is important to note that one’s eligibility for the 1-week radiotherapy programme is subjected to post-surgery early-stage breast cancer patients with certain pathology criteria*, as well as their respective oncologist’s advice.

Still, the ultra-short 1-week radiotherapy confers a few major benefits to the patients.