Surgery can be curative (removal of primary tumor and obtaining of cure), palliative - relieving of symptoms (improving of life quality and in some cases prolonging of surviving), emergency surgery (e.g. intestinal occlusions, hemorrhages) or reconstructive/cosmetic surgery after mutilating operations (post-mastectomy).

Side effects of surgery are invalidism (amputations of a member, nose, ears, mastectomy-removal of the breast, enucleating= removal of an eye, scars), lymphedema (of an arm postmastectomy, of a leg after excision of pelvic lymph nodes), painful abdominal syndrome (due to adhesions or straps occurred after abdominal surgery).

Represents a therapeutic modality that, use cytotoxic drugs for destruction of malignant cells. It is delivered endo-venous (most frequently), per oral or intra-muscular.

Chemotherapy can be curative (representing the principal modality of treatment), neo-adjunct = preoperator chemotherapy (reducing of primary tumor, improvement of loco-regional control of disease and decreasing of risk for spread of malignant cells), adjunct chemotherapy = postoperator (for a lower risk for local and to distance recurrence, to patients with unfavorable prognostic factors) or palliative (for improving of life quality).

Chemotherapy is delivered in cures/series of 1, 2, 3 or 5 days (there are other more complex series), each period of treatment being followed by a recovering period ( 3-4 weeks). Depending on localization, histology type, clinical stage, coexisting diseases and option of oncologist there are used one or more drugs in association.

Side effects of chemotherapy are multiple with various grade of severity, temporary or permanent. They depend on drug, delivered dose and period of treatment. The most frequent are: fatigability, lost of appetite, alopecia (lost of hair), nausea, vomisments, increased risk for infections (through decreasing of leucocytes), anemia, mucositis, allergic reaction, abnormalities of intestinal transit (diarrhea or constipation), different beedings (due to decreasing of number of platelets). Most of the side effects can be relieved with specific medications and usually disappear at the end of the treatment.

Represents the modality treatment that use ionizing radiation. Using of ionizing radiation is based on possibility to destroy tumoral cells without severe and irreversible damages of normal tissues around the tumor.

Techniques of irradiation are : external irradiation, brachytherapy or curie-therapy (through implant of radioactive sources in tumoral tissue, in contact with the body or in preexisting cavities) and metabolic radiotherapy (using radioisotopes).

Radiotherapy can be curative, neo-adjuvant = preoperative irradiation (in order to decrease the primary tumor, to improve the local-regional control of the disease), adjuvant = postoperative irradiation (sterilization of tumoral bed with decreasing of local and remote recurrence to patients with poor prognostic factors) or palliative (anthalgic, decompresive, haemostatic).

Side effects depend on tumor's sit, type of irradiation, tumoral volume, time factor, age, clinical state of the patient, associated diseases. They can be acute (occurring during irradiation) or late (develop after 6 months from the end of the treatment). Acute side effects: state of "mal de irradiation" - in first days of irradiation (fatigability, anorexia, nausea, headache), skin erythema, mucositis, nausea, vommisment, diarrhea, abdominal pain, lost of hair, pale of the skin (due to anemia),increased risk for infections (due to decreasing of number of leucocytes), different bleeding (due to decreasing of platelets). Tardif side effects: fibrositis, dermatitis, ulcerations, fistulas, organs insufficiency (lung-fibrosis, bone marrow-aplasia, kidney-nephritis, heart-pericarditis, liver-hepatitis, irradiation myelopathy).

A particular category of side effects are those mutagens and carcinogens.

Radiotherapy is incriminated in occurrence of some secondary cancers after years from irradiation (leukemia, myelodisplasyas, lymphomas, sarcomas).

It is a treatment modality used in hormone-dependent cancers (tumors that grow in tissues whose development is controlled by hormones).

Hormone-therapies can be suppressive (suppress the sources of hormones in organism)-surgical, through medication or irradiation-additives (block the activities of hormones).

Breast cancer represents the localization in which this therapy is used and studied most frequently, both like in adjuvant treatment in patients with poor prognostic factors and in metastatic stage for palliation.

In rest, hormone treatment would relieve the symptoms (palliation) with improvement of life quality and influences in a small manner the prolongation of surviving.

Side effects are various and depend on used medication, are relative frequent, but in most cases, their severity is minimal, don't influence the life quality.

Biologic therapies involve those anti-tumor, treatments that use the activity of natural defense mechanisms of the organism against tumor and/or substances involved in differentiation, proliferation and activity of immune cells.

Considered the fourth major therapy in cancer, in last years it has evolve continuously in parallel with a better understanding of occurrence and evolution mechanisms of cancer.

The most used is immune-therapy with interferon and interleukins.

Most recently, in practice has been used: grow haematopoethic factors, monoclonal antibody and anti-angiogenesis agents.