COLUMBUS, Ohio -- There is a big step in the fight against breast cancer.
Imagine being able to skip chemotherapy. A genetic test is helping doctors predict which patients can do just that.
At 65 years old, Myra Hartman is right in the middle of a fight with breast cancer, spotted early during a routine mammogram.
But it didn't really hit her that she had breast cancer until she was waiting for some very important test results.
"When it really occurred to me, was that three weeks that I was waiting on the results from the … test," Hartman said.
The test is genetic and looks at 21 genes and helps doctors determine who will most likely see a reoccurrence of their cancer -- and who can avoid chemotherapy.
"In the past, we had to, in a sense, guess," said Dr. Tom Sweeney.
Sweeney said the test divides patients into three groups -- high, intermediate and low-risk.
"The high-risk patients, we clearly direct toward chemotherapy and the low-risk patients, we generate direct away from chemotherapy," Sweeney said.
Hartman said that on a scale of 0 to 100, she scored a 10 -- low risk for reoccurrence.
"I scored a 10 and of course when I told that to my children, they said, 'You've always been a ten,' so that helped with my decision not to do chemotherapy," Hartman said.
Hartman sat down with her doctor and mapped out a plan of surgery and radiation.
The test is designed for women with smaller tumors, so it's not for every breast cancer patient. But for Hartman, it meant skipping chemotherapy and the horrible side effects.
"I feel like I'm really blessed," Hartman said.
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