Can Metastatic Breast Cancer Be Cured?

[Debbie L.]

http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/c...full/102/7/456

Interesting article, mostly about how some oligometastatic disease might be appropriate for aggressive treatment with intent to cure. This paragraph, from their conclusions section, seems like a "considerable" understatement. (I want to see that separate manuscript about follow-up - they have taken on a big job.)

"The clinical consequences of confirming this hypothesis would be considerable. First, it would suggest that a selected subset of MBC patients should be approached with curative, not palliative, intent. Second, the current minimalistic postoperative monitoring should be revised to allow early diagnosis of low-burden disease relapse. The crucial issue of follow-up and its consequences will be addressed in detail by the Task Force in a separate manuscript. As a consequence, a rigorous economic evaluation would also be required to calculate the cost to benefit ratio and the assessment of personal and social impact of this shift in the management of MBC patients."

[Nancy L]

Very interesting article---thanks for posting.

[Rich66]

Long felt post treatment monitoring was lax. They can say..oh..mbc is incurable so catching it earlier isn't so important. But early detection in the liver (and other sites) seems to open up possibilities for surgical/ablative "cure".

[Ellie F]

Thanks for posting. really interesting article.Cures do seem to happen. A friend of mine had a liver resection for met colon cancer years ago. He remains cancer free.My onc says he also has some bc patients that have had the same outcome. Makes you think!
Ellie

[pibikay]

Let us all hope it is Curable
PBK