Preya Ananthakrishnan, MD, Director of Breast Surgery at White Plains Hospital, shared her thoughts with FiOS1 News about a groundbreaking study conducted by our colleagues at Montefiore that indicates many women with a particular type of breast cancer may not need chemotherapy as part of their treatment.
The study, led by Joseph Sparano, MD, Associate Chairman for Clinical Research in the Department of Oncology at Montefiore Medical Center, was presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in June. The 12-year study, showed that for women with a specific type of breast cancer, treatment with chemotherapy and hormone therapy after surgery is not more beneficial than treatment with hormone therapy alone.
The new findings suggest that chemotherapy may be avoided in about 70 percent of women with HR-positive, HER2-negative, node-negative breast cancer:
- older than 50 and with a recurrence score of 11–25 (45 percent)
- any age with a recurrence score of 0–10 (16 percent)
- 50 years old or younger with a recurrence score of 11–15 (8 percent
This is an important clinical finding and, according to Dr. Ananthakrishnan, will allow for discussion about treatment options between the physician and women with an early-stage breast cancer diagnosis.
Read about the study at the National Cancer Institute: https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/press-releases/2018/tailorx-breast-cancer-chemotherapy