|
E-mail this page to a friend!
Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Changing Therapy Sequence does not Improve Survival
for Inflammatory Breast Cancer
June 19, 2006 – The survival rates of those with
inflammatory breast cancer, an aggressive and deadly form of cancer,
have improved by combining surgery and various therapies. But a new
study tested when the surgery should be done in this process – before or
after other treatments - and found it makes no difference in survival
rates, which remain poor.
| |
Related Stories |
|
| |
Tamoxifen and Raloxifene Both Guard Against Invasive
Breast Cancer, But…
Raloxifene the rising star says editorial in JAMA
June 5, 2006 - Raloxifene and tamoxifen are both
effective in reducing the risk of invasive breast cancer, but each has
potential disease and quality of life side effects that women and their
physicians will need to consider, according to two reports and an
editorial published online June 5 by JAMA.
Read more...
Older Women with Early Breast Cancer have Better
Survival with Aromasin
Company says 17% less deaths when
switched from tamoxifen
June 3, 2006 - New data from the Intergroup
Exemestane Study (IES) showed for the first time today that hormone
sensitive postmenopausal early breast cancer patients who switched to
Aromasin after 2 to 3 years of tamoxifen were 17% more likely to be
alive and were 25% less likely to have their cancer return than patients
who continued on tamoxifen for a full 5 years of therapy. The news was
issued by the company.
Read more...
Read more
on
Health & Medicine |
|
Approximately 2.5 in 100,000 women develop
inflammatory breast cancer, which is characterized by rapid tumor
growth, early metastasis (cancer spreading to other parts of the body)
and poor survival rates as compared with other forms of breast cancer,
according to background information in the article in the June issue of
Archives of Surgery, one of the Journal of the American Medical
Association journals.
Combining surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy
and endocrine therapy has improved survival rates and become the
standard of care for patients with this disease. Some recent studies
have suggested that performing surgery before beginning other types of
treatment may improve survival rates.
Rory L. Smoot, M.D., and colleagues at Mayo Clinic
College of Medicine, Rochester, Minn., reviewed data from the records of
156 consecutive patients (155 female, one male) who were treated there
for inflammatory breast cancer between 1985 and 2003. Twenty-eight
patients with cancer that had already metastasized at their first visit
were excluded from the study. The remaining 128 patients had an average
age of 53 years, and 57 percent of women were post-menopausal.
By 2003, 51 patients (40 percent) survived and 77
(60 percent) died; five-year survival rates were 42 percent with 21
percent surviving disease-free.
Of the 128 patients without metastatic disease, 22
(17 percent) had surgery as their initial treatment and 106 (83 percent)
underwent chemotherapy first.
Although some analyses showed that patients who had
surgery first lived longer than those who did not, the results were not
significant when other factors were taken into account, the report says.
In addition, certain aspects of each patients'
prognosis likely influenced her and her physician's treatment decisions,
making outcomes difficult to compare, the researchers write.
"The treatment strategy described herein (neoadjuvant
chemotherapy, mastectomy, adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy,
followed by endocrine therapy if receptors are positive) has
significantly increased overall survival compared with single-modality
or dual-modality regimens, but overall survival remains low compared
with that associated with noninflammatory breast cancer," the authors
conclude.
"Although the combined-modality regimen clearly
provides the best outcome for patients with inflammatory breast cancer,
further research is necessary to delineate subsets of patients who may
benefit from alterations in the approach to improve survival from this
aggressive disease."
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
