Updated July 28, 2014.

Metastatic breast cancer, also known as Stage IV, is breast cancer that has traveled from the breast to the bones, brain, liver or lungs. When I decided to review the statistics regarding the frequency of metastatic breast cancer (MBC), I was immediately cautioned at various sites to not seek out this information. It seems that most doctors will caution MBC patients that because each person is an individual, this is a situation where statistics may not be relevant because of the spectrum that MBC covers.

So as I am in agreement that individual differences are so great from one person to the next, I decided not to spend any additional time on seeking this information. After all, I have never been a fan of statistics anyway. So with that in mind, I decided to approach this a little differently but I would learn why statistics are not really applicable.

The majority of people do not know what metastatic breast cancer is. Based upon that fact, it is understandable that one of the main factors in waging the war on MBC is that we need more awareness and education about this matter. The most important fact about MBC is that there is no cure. MBC cancer cells often differ from the primary breast cancer from which they originated. Therefore, they have often developed resistance to the previous treatments that have been utilized.

Although MBC has spread to another part of the body, it is still considered to be and treated as breast cancer. For example, breast cancer that has spread to the lungs is still breast cancer and treated with breast cancer drugs rather than cancer that began in the lungs.

Some women are diagnosed with MBC at the time of their first diagnosis but this is not common in the United States. Most often, if MBC does occur, it will be months or years after a woman has completed treatment for her local breast cancer. The risk of the breast cancer returning and metastasizing apparently depends greatly on the biology of the tumor itself and the stage at the time of the original diagnosis. This is the reason that statistics are not a good measurement in determining the individual outcome in treating MBC.

As with any type of breast cancer treatment, it is most important to talk to your oncologist about your treatment choices, what he or she recommends and why and the side effects of each treatment. Treatments are typically the same as those given for any other breast cancer and include hormone therapy, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and targeted therapy. Surgery is rarely used to treat MBC. That is because cancer cells are no longer in one place making the cancer hard to remove surgically. However, surgery may be used to reduce the size of a tumor and ease symptoms.

Women battling MBC need additional psychological, emotional, financial and treatment-related support. However, with the current lack of knowledge about MBC and the emphasis on early diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, little to no attention is being given to MBC. This is understandable but definitely not acceptable. Just because someone chooses to ignore a problem doesn’t make it go away. So it is with MBC. We need to increase the research and the education in order to improve the outcome. We need to provide more help and assistance to those who are dealing with MBC. They are fighting for their lives and endeavoring to have a good quality of life while often dealing with pain that the rest of us can’t begin to imagine. We owe them more than this. We owe them the help and support and care that we would want if we were dealing with MBC in our lives.