Results of a study performed by Canadian researchers have been revealed to the public on Monday, showing that three weeks of radiation treatment are as effective as the standard radiation time of five to seven weeks in early-stage breast cancer.

Doctors involved in the study looked at 1,234 women for a period of 13 years, from 1993 to 1996. Half of the patients received the standard treatment for the disease, which consisted of 25 radiation sessions over 35 days, while the rest of the group had 16 sessions over 22 days.

The findings of the research proved that radiation time can be safely reduced, which would enable clinics to treat more women, given that presently, almost 30% of the patients who need chemotherapy avoid it by choosing a mastectomy over a lumpectomy plus radiation treatment. Mastectomy is the medical term used to refer to surgically removing one or both breasts as a means to treat breast cancer. A lumpectomy is the surgical removal of a tumor in a patient’s breast, the procedure being both relatively non-invasive and breast-preserving, as opposed to the aforementioned one.

Neverthelees, it must be stated that the study’s results only apply to women with early cancers, whose tumors have not spread to the lymph nodes, according to Anthony L. Zietman, a professor of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School.

Anually, a number of 180,000 women throughout the United States develop breast cancer, of which approximately 40% need to undergo radiation treatment in order to prevent the cancer from reoccurring in the same breast.