MammoSite® Radiation Therapy System (RTS)
This innovative form of brachytherapy is used to treat breast cancer. The MammoSite® system delivers radiation quickly and accurately to breast tumors.
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Dr. Bernard Eden: MammoSite® system is a radiation delivery system to give radiation treatments locally to breast cancer tumor beds. We know from studying thousands of women that after a lumpectomy is performed, it’s necessary to give radiation to the breast otherwise there’s a very high chance that the cancer will recur again. Radiation significantly reduces this risk of recurrence.
One way to deliver the radiation to the tumor site is by using what’s called the MammoSite® balloon, which is a balloon that we place into the lumpectomy cavity. We blow it up and then we place a radioactive source inside the balloon and it treats the cavity from the inside out, thereby giving the radiation just to that area. This is very important because we don’t have to treat the entire breast so there are less radiation effects to the other parts of the breast.
Also, this treatment is delivered in a very short time, approximately five days. Traditionally with external beam treatments it takes six to seven weeks to treat the breast, but with the MammoSite® system we can treat that breast in five days. So women very much like this type of treatment.