Ask an expert: Breast cancer video: What treatment is there?

Want to know more about breast cancer? Dr Nick Plowman, Clinical Oncologist at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London answers some common questions about the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of breast cancer. Use the video clip menu below to select a question.

Video Transcript: What breast cancer treatment is there?

Once the diagnosis of breast cancer has been confirmed the doctor will ascertain whether the disease appears to be localised within the breast or has spread for example to the lymph nodes in the arm pit or further a field. 

This impacts on the treatment programme. 

There are four types of treatment that we use for breast cancer; surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and hormonal therapy and the exact combination or order of these treatments, if indeed all of them are appropriate, will be decided by the doctors depending on the individuals tumour size, location, stage and other parameters that will have been ascertained during the diagnosis and staging part of the programme.