BREAST cancer is the most common cancer in the UK. One person is diagnosed with breast cancer every 10 minutes, and one in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetimes.

During the course of this Breast Cancer Awareness Month, 5,000 people will be diagnosed with breast cancer.

While breast cancer survival has been consistently improving in the UK, more work clearly needs to be done.

This is one of the missions of The Rutherford Cancer Centre South Wales, a state-of-the-art facility which hopes to be at the forefront of this fight.

The centre is currently the only place in the UK to offer high energy proton beam therapy for cancer patients, and made headlines earlier this year when treating a cancer patient with proton beam therapy in the UK for first time – a landmark moment for British cancer care.

Proton beam therapy is a type of radiotherapy treatment which provides accurate and targeted treatment of tumours near or within sensitive organs while limiting radiation exposure to healthy tissues.

This could be particularly transformative for breast cancer patients, as conventional treatment can have overwhelming long-term emotional and physical side-effects.

There are more than 90,000 cancer patients in the UK every year who are treated with radical radiotherapy.

The Rutherford Cancer Centres believe that around ten per cent of patients treated with radical radiotherapy – the figure accepted at European level – could be better treated with proton therapy.

Since 63 per cent of patients diagnosed with breast cancer have radiotherapy as part of their primary treatment, proton beam therapy can be a viable solution for many breast cancer patients.

Professor Peter Barrett-Lee, who has more than 25 years of experience in treating breast cancer and is qualified to deliver proton beam therapy for breast cancer patients, said: “While proton beam therapy may not be the solution for all breast cancer patients, it can prove to be highly effective in minimising the toxicity on healthy tissues, especially the heart, lungs and contralateral breast, where even a minimal dose of radiation could lead to a secondary tumour.

"Proton beam therapy could deliver treatment for breast cancer patients with considerably fewer risks and side effects.”

While conventional X-ray therapy has been crucial in saving the lives of thousands of women over the years, helping to double the survival rate in the UK over the last 40 years, it has the potential risk of exposing the heart, lungs and other organs to toxic doses.

This could result in a higher risk of coronary artery disease, lung scarring, and secondary malignancies.

“Radiation-induced heart disease is a common late side effect of radiotherapy in breast cancer patients, using proton beam therapy considerably reduces the dose to critical organs and thus reduces the risk of cardiotoxicity,” Professor Lee said, noting that proton beam therapy can be particularly effective in treating patients with cancer in the left breast, which is located closer to the heart.

Since proton beam therapy reduces excess radiation to healthy tissue and organs, patients are more likely to survive potential complications associated with conventional radiotherapy that have a higher risk of radiation-induced cardiovascular diseases – it is estimated that proton beam therapy reduces exposure to the heart by 99 per cent when irradiating the left breast compared to conventional radiotherapy.

By bringing this treatment to the UK, the Rutherford Cancer Centre South Wales hopes to take the momentum to a new level in the fight against breast cancer, and potentially transform the lives of thousands of survivors by significantly improving their health and quality of life after treatment.