Localized versus systemic treatments


Treatments for breast cancer can be divided into those that are:

  • Localized
  • Systemic

Localized treatments target the precise region of the tumor, without affecting the remaining of the body.
Systemic treatments – which can be administered orally or injected into the bloodstream through a catheter – will travel through all or part of the body to kill tumor cells.

Thus, while surgery and radiotherapy are used to eliminate localized tumors, a treatment of chemotherapy, hormonal or targeted therapy, acts as well on those cancer cells spread throughout the body (the cancer metastases).


To make explanations easier, treatments will be divided and analyzed as localized  vs systemic .

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