Debra A. Pratt, MD, on Time to Completion of Breast Cancer Treatment and Survival
2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
In her recent study, Debra A. Pratt, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, showed that when breast cancer treatment using any of three modalities takes longer than 38 weeks, it is associated with a decrease in survival, regardless of the receptor status. Patients with breast cancer who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy were more likely to take longer than 38 weeks to complete treatment than those undergoing surgery first (Abstract S11-34 ).
The ASCO Post Staff
Joseph A. Sparano, MD, of the Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, discusses the development and validation of a tool that integrates the 21-gene recurrence score and clinicopathologic features to individualize prognosis for distant recurrence and predict chemotherapy benefit in patients with early breast cancer with greater precision (Abstract GS4-10).
The ASCO Post Staff
Lee S. Schwartzberg, MD, of the West Cancer Center, discusses phase III results from the CONTESSA study, which showed that an all-oral regimen of tesetaxel plus a reduced dose of capecitabine significantly improved progression-free survival compared with capecitabine alone in patients with HER2-negative, hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer previously treated with a taxane (Abstract GS4-01).
Editor's note: On March 22, 2021, Odonate Therapeutics announced it was discontinuing the development of tesetaxel and will close the company's operations. Read more here.
The ASCO Post Staff
Sibylle Loibl, MD, of the German Breast Group, discusses the first phase III results from the PENELOPE-B study of palbociclib combined with endocrine therapy in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative primary breast cancer who are at high risk for relapse after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (Abstract GS1-02).
The ASCO Post Staff
Patricia A. Ganz, MD, of the University of California, Los Angeles, discusses study findings that showed mindfulness meditation and survivorship education may effectively reduce depression and related symptoms such as fatigue and sleep disturbance, which pose serious threats to younger women’s health and well-being after being treated for cancer (Abstract GS2-10).
The ASCO Post Staff
Chirag Shah, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, discusses the impact of DCISionRT testing on radiation therapy recommendations for patients with ductal carcinoma in situ following lumpectomy. His study found that despite using traditional favorable-risk criteria, radiation recommendations were changed in more than 40% of patients (Abstract PS6-17).
