Inner Circle Women

How long should a patient take tamoxifen for the treatment of breast cancer?

Patients with advanced breast cancer may take tamoxifen for varying lengths of time, depending on their response to this treatment and other factors. When used as adjuvant therapy for early stage breast cancer, tamoxifen is generally prescribed for 5 years. However, the ideal length of treatment with tamoxifen is not known.

How Often Should I Take Tamoxifen?
Two studies have confirmed the benefit of taking adjuvant tamoxifen daily for 5 years. These studies compared 5 years of treatment with tamoxifen with 10 years of treatment. When taken for 5 years, the drug reduces the risk of recurrence of the original breast cancer and also reduces the risk of developing a second primary cancer in the other breast. Taking tamoxifen for longer than 5 years is not more effective than 5 years of therapy.

What is Tamoxifen
Tamoxifen is an oral selective estrogen receptor modulator which is used in breast cancer treatment, and is currently the world’s largest selling breast cancer treatment. It is used for the treatment of early and advanced breast cancer in pre- and post-menopausal women. It is also approved by the FDA for the reduction of the incidence of breast cancer in women at high risk of developing the disease. It has been further approved for the reduction of contralateral (in the opposite breast) breast cancer.

Tamoxifen and Cancer
Tamoxifen is used to reduce the risk of breast cancer for women who:

• are at high risk of breast cancer but have no personal history of the disease
• have non-invasive, hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer, or DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ)
• have hormone-receptor-positive invasive breast cancer at any stage.

Tamoxifen is sometimes used to treat gynecomastia in men. Tamoxifen is also used by bodybuilders in a steroid cycle to try and prevent or reduce drug-induced gynecomastia caused by steroids that are used in the same cycle.

Tamoxifen is also used to treat infertility in women with anovulatory disorders. A dose of 10-40 mg per day is administered in days 3-7 of a woman’s cycle.

If you have family or friends who suffer from drug addiction probably already know that one of the stages to the process of recovering from drug addiction is detoxification. But need to be understood that doing drug detox alone is very dangerous. Drug detox should only be done under the supervision of experts who are specifically learning to handle the detoxification process. Drug detox should be done in a comfortable environment and as if in their own homes in order to maintain the patient’s emotional state.

Drug detox is the hardest phase of the recovery process of drug addiction, but that does not mean this phase can be skipped or not been done at all, because drug detox is the most important steps that must be done. Drug detox will be made only once in the healing process, and if the patient willing to commit to heal, then they should not pass through this phase again.

At the time of the drug detox process, the patient must get adequate rest, balanced nutrition, proper diet, as well as assistance in order not to return to their old habits.

Drug detox is an important step in the rehabilitation process. The goal of drug detox program is to help the patient to be free from drug addiction so that they can continue to move and organize their lives again from the beginning.

This is when the support from family is higly needed. With the support, love, care and understanding given to the patients, they will heal easily without have to feel the pain. In this phase the patients will realize that they have to pass all the steps and the pain, to reaching a better life. Everyday comes on purpose. Drug detox is the best answer.