Poor ten year prognosis for her2 t1No ....

[RobinP]

Well I read the article I was waiting for from the San Antonio Breast Conference abstracts that was just released today. According to it, the ten year prognosis is much lowered for her2 early stage bc. Yet, we must remember the cohort that was researched was from years ago when adjuvant Herceptin was not used and adjuvant chemotherapy may not have been recommended either for such small and early breast cancer. Additionally, the her2+. hormonal negative test group was very small at n= 42. I would say that is too small of a group to have statistical significance and that more studies are indicated. At the same time, I feel the study does suggest the need for aggressive chemotherapy and Herceptin for early stage her2+, hormonal negative breast cancer.For those interestsed the abstract I am regarding, is 2031 on the San Antonio Breast site.

[JohnL]

Had a quick look at this study. You are right, the data is drawn from individuals diagnosed 1986 - 1992. At this time I think it unlikely that early stage T1N0 patients were offered adjuvant chemo - and allowing for the small sample size the survival and relapse free rates are pretty much inline with other studies based upon patients treated only with surgery.

I think the purpose of the study is to underline the argument, 'Look what happens if we don't hit early stage HER2+ hard with everything we've got as soon as we can'. It's when you see figures like this you begin to appreciate how lucky we are to be living in 2006 not 1986.

Third generation chemo and Herceptin have changed DFS dramatically.

[Hopeful]

In addition to JohnL's comments, we need to remember that the determination of who was node negative and who was node positive at that time was not performed with the precision that it is today (no one was checked for micro or nano mets), and it is very possible there are a fair number of patients who would be classified node positive today that are included in the stats for node negative in this poster.

Hopeful

[mts]

These stats -like most- only confirm that research is work in progress... and that an informed patient has the best chance for long term survival.

Maria (MTS)

[sally]

It doesn't seem like they would waste their time, money and effort on such old data. But it is nice to see that we are proving them wrong. Sally

[Karen W]

Read Donna's post (I'll bump it to the top) titled, Wonderful abstract, Nice to see it in print.

Karen