Shifting Trends For Breast Cancer Chemotherapy

For years scientists and physicians were adding more and more chemotherapy for the therapy of breast cancer. They were trying different combinations, and different time interval between therapys. They have tried very high dose chemotherapy used for bone marrow transplant and shorter intervals between chemotherapy sessions.

After all these aggressive chemotherapy based outlooks for the therapy of breast cancer, scientists are not having a second thought for the use of chemotherapy in breast cancer. There is an increasing trend among scientists and physicians to skip chemotherapy altogether and treat women with breast cancer using hormonal treatment.

At this time this trend is just appearing, and is gaining popularity. This approach still lack solid scientific proof based on randomized clinical trials, so scientists are in the process of conducting clinical trials to prove the point. Studies with this theme are beginning to emerge.

At this time the general guidelines for therapy of breast cancer calls for postoperative adjuvant therapy of breast cancer with chemotherapy in almost all patients. Generally all women who have breast cancer tumors measuring more than 1 centimeter receives adjuvant chemotherapy.

In the new approach the decision for chemotherapy would be based mainly on hormonal status of the tumor, rather than tumor size. This would mean that a vast majority of women who have hormone receptor negative tumor would not be receiving adjuvant chemotherapy. It is not clear how the lymph node involvement would fit in to this algorithm of therapy, but is possible that women who have smaller number of lymph node involvement may also be able to skip chemotherapy in favor of hormonal treatment. The final decisions regarding these issues could only be clarified by large clinical trials.

If these new ideas gain scientific validity by positive clinical trials then there would be a major change in the way breast cancer is treated. Two such large studies are about to begin and hopefully would give us answers to these questions.