When it comes to treatment, our goal is to provide care that’s as seamless, advanced, and patient-friendly as possible. As our knowledge of breast cancer increases, so too does our ability to tailor treatment to individual patients based on genetics, family history, and personal preference. This personalized treatment approach works best with medical professionals who, like ours, possess a deep level of expertise in their respective fields. Physicians in our Breast Surgical Oncology and Reconstructive Breast Surgery departments, for example, have performed high volumes of surgery on patients, under both routine and challenging circumstances.

Medical Oncology

Similarly, our medical oncologists specialize in breast cancer and are experienced in treating all types of this disease, including the unusual and complex. Depending on the cancer stage, the characteristics of the tumor, as well as your individual needs and expectations, our specialists will create a personalized treatment plan for you. In many cases, that treatment plan will involve chemotherapy. If your breast cancer expresses the estrogen and/or progesterone receptor (ER and/or PR-positive), your medical oncologist may recommend endocrine therapy. If you are pre-menopausal and have been diagnosed with an estrogen receptor-positive breast tumor, your medical oncologist may also ovarian ablation or suppression, which halts ovary function.

Radiation Oncology

At the Johns Hopkins Breast Cancer Program, our radiation oncologists are experts in treating patients with breast cancer. Increasingly, we recognize and implement radiation treatment protocols that are tailored and patient-centered. The key is to make radiation therapy, which uses high-energy rays (such as X-rays) to kill cancer cells or shrink tumors, as convenient and tolerable for patients without sacrificing its efficacy. You can read more about radiation therapy and the options we provide.

Clinical Trials

Conducting clinical trials represents an essential part of our mission, as it is the only way to find safe and potentially more effective therapies to treat cancer. Patients who enroll in clinical trials gain access to new, experimental treatments that may offer better results than current treatments. Through clinical trial research, we are learning how to engage the immune system to fight breast cancer, working on developing a non-invasive liquid biopsy test that will allow us to identify microscopic cancer cells within the blood, and so much more. View our current list of breast cancer-related clinical trials.