Fungating Metastatic Breast Cancer, a Challenging Case Report of Bleeding Control and Palliative Wound Care

Abstract

This case will discuss the palliative care in an advanced metastatic and fungating breast cancer. As sometimes happens, patients elect to go with different means of treatment and not the mastectomy with lymph node dissection, radiation, and chemotherapy that is the standard of care. Even though the patient elected not to attempt the full surgery, there are still surgical options that could have helped her quality of life and are important to consider. Wound care can be curative for many different wounds but can also greatly improve the quality of life that is present. Wounds leave the body exposed to secondary infections and can produce foul odor which is not conducive to patient or family comfort and happiness. It can be used in conjunction with many different treatments and should not be forgotten in the treatment of all patients. In this case we also discussed a variety of methods for bleeding control of this cancerous mass.