The New York Times reported that a “quiet revolution in breast cancer treatment” is underway in which there is “a slow chipping away at the number of people for whom chemotherapy is recommended” for breast cancer.

The reason for the growing “no-chemo revolution” is that “genetic tests can now reveal whether chemotherapy would be beneficial.”

For many patients with breast cancer, “there are better options with an ever-expanding array of non-chemotherapy drugs such as estrogen blockers and drugs that destroy cancers by attacking specific proteins on the surface of tumors.

“And there is a growing willingness among oncologists to scale back unhelpful treatments.”

The American Cancer Society says, “We now can safely avoid chemotherapy in about 70 percent of patients who are diagnosed with the most common form of breast cancer.”

Chemotherapy can be a lifesaving treatment but can have unpleasant side effects.

The good news is that targeted chemo-free therapies are increasingly proving effective not only for breast cancer patients but lung cancer patients as well, reducing toxic side effects while at the same time increasing survival rates. 

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