The results from the UPMC Cancer Center’s experience with Via Pathways and those reported by other pathways programs suggest that these are effective models for improving quality, reducing unwarranted variability…
Survivors of breast cancer are confronted with a plethora of cancer treatment-related long-term symptoms, the most common being fatigue, hot flashes, sexual dysfunction, arthralgias, neuropathy, and cognitive dysfunction. Survivors of…
Lessons have recently been learned in the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. This article explains how diagnosis of a pathologic complete response (pCR) can avoid an unfavorable prognosis in patients with…
ERBB2 gene amplification occurs in ∼20% of human breast cancers (BC) and is associated with an adverse clinical prognosis, indicating that it may be playing a critical role in disease…
The costs of breast cancer care are substantial and growing, and they extend across the spectrum of care. Medical therapies and hospitalizations account for a significant proportion of these costs….
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), defined as lacking expression of the estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, and HER2, comprises approximately 15% of incident breast cancers and is over-represented among those with metastatic…
First-line endocrine therapy by estrogen antagonism or suppression of estrogen achieves objective responses (ORs) and clinical benefit (CB) in around 30% and 50% of estrogen receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer patients,…
Estrogen Receptor–positive/HER-2 negative breast cancers represent a heterogeneous group of tumors. Luminal A and B tumor subtypes can be identified through immunohistochemical assessment of estrogen and progesterone receptor, Ki-67 and…
Duct carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a common but non–life-threatening breast cancer. Four large prospective randomized trials comparing radiation therapy (RT) with none after breast-conservation surgery have all concluded that…
The development and wide acceptance of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) has profoundly affected the management of breast cancer. SLNB has spared the additional morbidity of axillary lymph node dissection…
