Up to one-third of patients with early, hormone-dependent, HER2-positive breast cancer experience disease recurrence. Meanwhile, including one of the CDK4/6 inhibitors in their therapy can reduce the risk of recurrence by as much as 34 percent. This is a chance for patients to be completely cured. - If we reduce the risk of recurrence in our patients at an early stage, the cancer won't spread and they won't have to be treated later for advanced disease, comments Dr. Joanna Kufel-Grabowska of the Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy at the Medical University of Gdansk, MD.
Patients with early breast cancer need access to additional therapy
Published June 19, 2023 08:49
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Early breast cancer is diagnosed in more than 90 percent of all patients diagnosed with breast cancer. A high percentage of patients, up to 30 percent, experience recurrences, which most often occur as distant metastases - to the liver or bone. These make the disease incurable. The standard of care for early breast cancer is now perioperative treatment.
- It includes hormone treatment, surgery and, if necessary, also chemotherapy. We would like to have abemaciclib still available, as an additional precaution for those with locally more advanced disease, i.e. disease in which at least four lymph nodes are involved, or one to three if there are additional risk factors," says Dr. Joanna Kufel-Grabowska.
In Poland, this treatment is not yet reimbursed, meanwhile it significantly improves the prognosis of patients, due to a significant reduction in the risk of recurrence by as much as 34 percent, according to early studies. The therapy is used for two years, along with hormone therapy.
- These are patients who do not have a small cancer, but the disease is already initially advanced. So not only do we have a breast tumor, but there are metastases in the lymph nodes. The thing about breast cancer is that the smaller the tumor, the greater the chance of a complete cure. For patients where we know that the baseline is already worse, we should be able to take all possible measures to reduce the risk of recurrence. So if we reduce the risk of recurrence in our patients at an early stage, the cancer won't spread and they won't have to be treated later for advanced disease," emphasizes Dr. Joanna Kufel-Grabowska.
Breast cancer accounts for about 23 percent of all malignancies in women and about 14 percent of deaths from it. An estimated 1.5 million women worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer annually, and about 400,000 die from it.
