Breast Cancer in Bone

Updated January 01, 2014.

In this patient with metastatic breast cancer, the cancer has spread to the bone. You can see the bone at the top of the femur (thigh bone) on the left side of the image looks thinner than on the right side of the image. The cause of the weakened bone is the breast cancer invading the bone.

Often at this stage, a surgeon will operate on the patient to help support the bone with a metal rod. In this patient, however, she did not have surgery.

Continue on to see what happened...

Updated January 01, 2014.

Because of the weakened bone seen on the previous x-ray, this patient sustained a pathologic fracture of the femur (thigh bone) just below the hip joint. After cancer had weakened the bone in this patient, the weight of her body was eventually too much to support. Now the bone had been fractured, and surgery needs to be performed.

A pathologic fracture occurs when the bone is weakened by some condition (cancer, infection, and osteoporosis are just some causes of pathologic fracture).

See how this patient is treated on the next page...

Updated January 01, 2014.

This patient with metastatic breast cancer to bone had a pathologic fracture of the upper femur (thigh bone). Because of the weakened and fracture bone, surgery is needed to realign and hold the bones in position.
A metal rod and screws are used to hold the bone ends in the proper position. This will allow this patient to begin moving again soon after the surgical procedure.