Timeline in Treatment
- 3000 BCE: The oldest description of cancer was discovered in an ancient Egyptian text that described the treatment of tumors of the breast
- 400s BCE: Hippocrates described cancer as a "humoral disease," blaming an imbalance of bodily fluids
- 1740: The first cancer hospital opened in Reims, France, at a time when cancer was thought to be contagious
- 1700s: Surgery emerged as a recommended treatment for breast cancer, but it was often debilitating and led to severe infections due to the absence of anesthesia and aseptic conditions
- 1840s: Anesthesia became available, making rapid advances in surgery possible
- 1866: The hereditary nature of breast cancer was described for the first time by French surgeon Pierre Paul Broca
- 1882: William Halsted first performed the radical mastectomy, a surgical technique to remove the breast, regional lymphatics, and entire pectoralis major
- 1897: Radiation was introduced as a treatment for breast cancer, though it would not be widely used until the 1960s
- 1948: Charles Huggins published research on the effects of hormones on breast cancer, laying the groundwork for hormonal therapies
- 1940s: Chemotherapy was introduced as a treatment for cancer
- 1953: Reginald Murley and Ivor Glyn Williams studied case records of patients and found that those treated with simple excision and radiation survived as long as those treated by radical surgery
- 1960s: Tamoxifen, a hormonal therapy, was developed and later proved effective in treating estrogen-receptor (ER) positive breast cancer
- 1971: The American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute launched the Breast Cancer Detection Demonstration Project, a five-year study that showed the effectiveness of large-scale screening for breast cancer using mammography and clinical breast exams
- 1970s: Major studies were published showing the effectiveness of postoperative, or adjuvant, chemotherapy
- 1980s: Due to a growing body of high-quality research, breast-conserving surgical techniques became more widely utilized in combination with other therapies
- 1990s: BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes were identified as major genetic factors contributing to breast cancer risk
- 1998: Trastuzumab (Herceptin), a monoclonal antibody that targets abnormal genes in breast cancer cells, was approved in 1998 by the FDA
- 2006: Aromatase inhibitors, a new class of hormonal therapy, were approved for postmenopausal women
- 2018: Olaparib was approved for treating metastatic breast cancer with BRCA gene mutations
- 2022: National Cancer Institute funded a large-scale, five-year randomized trial to find out if 3-D mammography is more effective than traditional mammograms at detecting breast cancer