Breast Cancer with Chest Wall Disease Comprehensive Program

Overview

Breast cancer can sometimes be complicated by chest wall involvement including nodules, skin metastases, and/or skin ulceration. The Breast Cancer with Chest Wall Disease Comprehensive Program provides thorough, multidisciplinary care to patients with breast cancer and these chest wall complications. Our unique, multidisciplinary approach helps ensure that patients with breast cancer and chest wall disease receive state-of-the-art care from a team of specialists across Mass General who are committed to the care of these patients.

Conditions we treat:

• Breast cancer with chest wall disease, nodules, or recurrence
• Breast cancer with skin metastases or ulceration
• Inflammatory breast cancer

Multidisciplinary Patient Care

The Breast Cancer with Chest Wall Disease Comprehensive Program offers patients multidisciplinary evaluation and treatment by a breast medical oncologist (director Neelima Vidula, MD), radiation oncologist (Alice Ho, MD), surgeon (Francys Verdial Argueta, MD, MPH), and dermatologist (Shawn Demehri, MD, PhD) to determine the best treatment plan, as treatment can include a combination of surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and/or targeted therapies. We offer the opportunity for patients to have an in-clinic biopsy of a chest wall lesion for pathology evaluation.

Our program also provides patients with access to clinical trials, and supportive care services including pain management, wound care, lymphedema management, and psychosocial support. Our clinical research program aims to understand the clinical features of breast cancer with chest wall disease to help improve the treatment of this disease.

Clinical Trials

The Mass General Cancer Center offers an extensive array of clinical trials for patients with breast cancer, including:

• Pembrolizumab and carboplatin vs. carboplatin alone for breast cancer with chest wall disease (PI: Neelima Vidula, MD)
• Radiation, immunotherapy, and PARP inhibitor in triple negative breast cancer (NADiR) (PI: Alice Ho, MD)

Find listings of all our current Breast Cancer Clinical Trials.