October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Over 240,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year but today's treatments give patients a better chance at beating the disease and living a healthy life. Cheddar News spoke with Dr. Mehran Habibi, director of breast surgery with Staten Island University Hospital; Dr. Holly Marshall, division chief of breast imaging at University Hospitals Cleveland; and Dr. Neil Iyengar, breast medical oncologist with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center about the progress made in treatments.

<div class="block">October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Over 240,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year but today&#39;s treatments give patients a better chance at beating the disease and living a healthy life. Cheddar News spoke with Dr. Mehran Habibi, director of breast surgery with Staten Island University Hospital; Dr. Holly Marshall, division chief of breast imaging at University Hospitals Cleveland; and Dr. Neil Iyengar, breast medical oncologist with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center about the progress made in treatments.</div>

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Advancements in Breast Cancer Care and Treatments

Uh well, let's switch gears because October is breast cancer Awareness month. Very important and over 240,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year. But today's treatments give patients a better chance at beating the disease and living a healthy life. Take a look, breast cancer treatments have vastly improved over the last decade. Meet three doctors who are changing how we care for breast cancer patients. Doctor Mehran Habibi of Staten Island University Hospital says treatments can now be focused on minimizing the side effects on the patient. From surgical point of view, we have progressed and really perfected the surgical technique very nicely. We try to de escalate to the least amount of surgery that is needed. Habibi looks at the genomics of the patient's tumor. We all have genes that determine our propensity for disease, but tumors have a unique genetic code as well. We are able to look at the genes of the tumor, see the different mutations and see the different kind of like changes in them. This way, treatments can be customized. Doctors can tell if a tumor will respond to chemotherapy radiation, both or neither and who don't need extensive surgery can avoid it. It just gives us much more amount of information. A lot of those tailoring is happens in the, in the context of clinical trial. We are learning we are testing different treatments. Dr Holly Marshall of University Hospital's Cleveland has also been looking at ways to see the effectiveness of treatments as soon as possible. This is before the patient has surgery for breast cancer. Uh maybe uh the decision may be made to have neoadjuvant chemotherapy. This is chemotherapy before the patient has a definitive surgery for breast cancer. Marshall's team has been adding a magnetic resonance fingerprinting scan to a traditional MRI 7 to 14 days. After the first chemotherapy session, scans would be repeated, we would look to see if there is response to treatment. So if there is response, then the patient would continue on that uh chemotherapy regimen. If there's not response, then uh the a change would be made. Typically doctors would have to wait much longer to see if the chemo is working. This could save a patient from having negative side effects from treatments that might not work. Chemotherapy involves many cycles uh over several months. And if we're able to say if it's going to work after the first cycle, then um time will not be lost. Sometimes the most effective way to work with a patient is to look at the whole picture. Doctor Nila Yeng of Memorial Sloan Kettering studies. The effect of diet and exercise on developing breast cancer and their effect on the rate of reoccurrence. People should be very skeptical if you see a claim that this specific food will help to prevent breast cancer, for example. But what we have learned is that overall dietary patterns do influence the risk of developing breast cancer. He found people who eat mostly vegetables have a lower rate of breast cancer as well as a lower rate of having breast cancer recur again when I say plant forward, I don't mean that you have to be a vegetarian or a vegan. What that means is that at least 80% of your food consumption should be from minimally processed whole plant based foods. Iyengar has also shown that exercise can lead to less hormonal side effects from breast cancer treatments including joint pains, hot flashes and night sweats. Most of the data suggests that aerobic exercise is the most effective tool for combating cancer symptoms as well as potentially improving outcomes. After a cancer diagnosis. He's currently on the right dose of exercise that could have the best outcome for patients. This is a very powerful tool not only for helping people feel better during cancer therapy, but also potentially for uh fighting the cancer itself. The most important thing to know about getting breast cancer today is that you have options and support. It's gonna be ok. Take one day at a time and doctors like these are there to help today's breast cancer survivors live long and healthy lives for Cheddar news. I'm Michelle Castillo.