Medicine & Health
The Effects of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Treatment on the Qualities of Lives of Stage 3 Inflammatory Breast Cancer Patients
Drew Siegel
Medicine & Health
Drew Siegel
Breast cancer (BC) is the most common type of cancer. In 2020, there were 684,996 deaths from BC. Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) makes up only approximately 1-5% of all BC cases. IBC can occur when the cancerous cells infiltrate and block the lymph vessels in the breast. These lymph vessels typically drain fluids from the breasts, but in patients with IBC, they no longer can, leading to a buildup of fluids and, therefore, swelling and redness of the breasts. IBC has different symptoms and is not usually detectable in a mammogram, making it hard to diagnose until the third or fourth stage. Usually, doctors seek chemotherapy for their patients at these stages of cancer. While chemotherapy has relatively high efficacy, it has major effects on a patient’s quality of life. Chemotherapy often leads to infertility and sometimes premature permanent menopause. Because of the relatively young age and sex of most diagnosed patients, this can be especially devastating. In addition, IBC accounts for approximately 7% of breast cancer-related deaths, emphasizing an urgent need for new therapeutic approaches for IBC. One alternative treatment is immunotherapy, however, there has been little progress made, as few approaches have shown significant therapeutic efficacy, and few immunotherapy regimens are currently used to treat IBC. This study aims to look into the effects on the qualities of life of female patients of the age range of 30-45 with diagnosed inflammatory stage 3 IBC using immunotherapy by looking into their symptoms and survival rates in the three years after treatment began. More specifically, immune checkpoint inhibitors will be used to treat the patients with IBC.