NICE guidelines time between surgery and radiotherapy

Hi Beyoncepower

I had my operation at the end of March and had to wait for about 2 months before I started treatment. I would have started sooner only the machine was acting up so My treatment was delayed due a fault with the radiotherapy machine by about three weeks.

Wishing you the best of luck with your radiotherapy treatments.

Best wishes

Daisy53

Hi Beyoncepower

I had radiotherapy start 4 weeks after surgery. Just finished the course today. It was 15 standard therapies and 4 boost doses on consecutive weekdays. All ok. Skin looks as if it has a slight suntan in the area that was exposed. It was not a bad experience and no SEs to speak of. However, it was a bit tiring going to hospital every day.

As my old mum used to say to us: you have a tongue in your head, use it. I dont know where you are in the UK or how practical it would be for you, I would be asking if it was possible to be referred to the next nearest hospital for a quicker start.

I had neoaduvant chemo, so had to wait until it was over to get the surgery. At the outset my surgeon told me that they usually wait 3-4 weeks for things to heal before starting radiotherapy. I have absolute confidence in my surgeon and that is exactly what happened.

Good luck with your radiotherapy.

Hi Daisy53 thank you for this. Sorry you had to wait . I’m hopeful I can start in the next few weeks. It’s always reassuring to hear other people’s experiences. 
wishing you well xx

Hi WallyDug great to hear that you got on pretty well with the radiotherapy. I saw my consultant abs he thinks they’ll be in touch next week to start the process. Furiously practicing my exercises post auxiliary clearance so I can get that arm up! 
Looking forward to getting on with this ‘final’ treatment, it’s such a long journey! 
Wishing you all the best abs thank you for your positive response xx

Thanks Beyoncepower.

Daisy53 xx

Hi BeyoncePower 

I hope your results came back ok. I can’t find any NICE guidelines on the timing of radiotherapy (RT) after breast cancer surgery (BCS). Although there are quite a few studies that say it doesn’t make any difference to survival rates, such as this Dutch one

https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc2017159

Also, delaying RT until after chemo, which can obviously take many months, makes no difference to survival.

All this science is all very well, but they do also acknowledge that giving RT as soon as possible after BCS, usually 4-6 weeks is better for anxiety. 

I’ve also had WLE and ANC, 19 days ago, results tomorrow. May need chemo, so not really thinking about RT yet.

Wishing you well - especially with the exercises

Hi how did you get on with your results? Do you need chemo? X

How did you find the operation and recovery? I am having the same as you thus Wednesday. Did you have partial breast reconstruction too? I'm having a chest wall perforator flap. 

Hi BEtsycar

sorry for late reply. My results weren’t good - 20 out 28 nodes were positive , so I definitely need chemo.

I think my operation was slightly different to yours. I just had lumpectomy- it was only 1.2cm so no reconstruction needed. 

Just to warn you, for me I felt really pain free for the first few days after the operation and felt I didn’t need paracetamol or anything. But then after 10 days when dressings came off, it got more painful. Not really bad, but I needed paracetamol. I’ve since seen that it’s common to feel like this, usually just for a few days after the operation. Because there’s still the painkillers from the surgery in your system. Seems obvious but I worried that it was getting infected because of the pain and soreness.

my Bcn looked at it and all actually ok and healing nicely- though I’d hate to see whathealing badly looked like

again, the soreness is really common and 4 weeks on it does subside, especially when I forget to do my exercises.

Good luck for your operation tomorrow xx