What makes metastatic breast cancer different
- Medical Review: Lori B. Ranallo, RN, MSN, CBCN, APRN-BC
There are many people who undergo early-stage breast cancer treatment and never have to deal with cancer again. A metastatic breast cancer diagnosis is different because the cancer is treatable, but not curable. This means you will actively deal with breast cancer for the rest of your life.
Being diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer can happen to anyone, at any time. Even stage I cancer can become metastatic. And someone with stage I disease can find out years after their original treatment ended that the cancer metastasized.
Treatment for metastatic disease
With metastatic breast cancer, there are several goals for your treatment:
- To shrink or weaken the cancer
- To manage your symptoms and side effects
- To prevent the cancer from spreading further.
Your doctors will make changes to your treatment as the cancer grows or spreads to new places in the body.
The main concern is choosing the treatment path that will control the cancer as much as possible. But you and your doctors may also want to think about what you are willing to try and what you aren’t, so that you continue living the way you want to live. If one treatment stops working, you and your doctors will look at new options.
There are many new treatments for metastatic breast cancer. When exploring these options with your doctor, you will talk about potential side effects and how to manage them. Let your doctor know what is most important to you. This may include:
- Continuing to do your usual day-to-day activities
- Work
- Vacations
- Important events
- Doing things you enjoy
Your care team’s goal is to help you choose treatments that cause the fewest side effects while helping you to maintain a good quality of life and live as long as possible.
With stage IV disease, it’s difficult to fully remove cancer with surgery or medicine. New tumors may appear over time, or cells may stop responding to different treatments. While metastatic breast cancer is not considered curable, it’s possible to experience periods where tests show no evidence of disease, often called NED. While reaching NED may not always be possible, it’s likely that you will have periods when the cancer does not grow. This is called stable disease.
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Reviewed and updated: March 13, 2026
Reviewed by: Lori B. Ranallo, RN, MSN, CBCN, APRN-BC
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Living Beyond Breast Cancer is a national nonprofit organization that seeks to create a world that understands there is more than one way to have breast cancer. To fulfill its mission of providing trusted information and a community of support to those impacted by the disease, Living Beyond Breast Cancer offers on-demand emotional, practical, and evidence-based content. For over 30 years, the organization has remained committed to creating a culture of acceptance — where sharing the diversity of the lived experience of breast cancer fosters self-advocacy and hope. For more information, learn more about our programs and services.