If you've been diagnosed with breast cancer, new treatment advances can never happen quickly enough. It's especially true for women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. When a treatment doesn't work or stops working, it can feel like there's been no progress at all.
The study reviewed here shows that researchers ARE steadily finding new and better ways to treat breast cancer, including advanced (metastatic) breast cancer. On average, women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2001 lived more than 50% longer after treatment started than women diagnosed and treated 10 years earlier in 1991. During that 10 years, 6 new drugs or drug types became available to treat metastatic breast cancer. They are:
While not specifically addressed in this study, it's likely that some of the improvement in survival from 1991 to 2001 was because doctors had more knowledge about how and when to use the treatment options available for metastatic breast cancer.
Doctors expect this steady improvement in treatment options to continue. Since 2001, more new treatments for metastatic breast cancer have become available. These include:
And others, such as ixabepilone, are expected to become available very soon.
Breast cancer treatment advances can never be fast enough for women who are being treated, especially those with metastatic disease. Still, treatments do offer real hope, as does the knowledge and skill of the doctors and other healthcare professionals who care for women with breast cancer.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Although women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer general do not have as good a prognosis as women diagnosed in earlier disease stages, significant improvements have been made. The introduction of new chemotherapy drugs in the last decade has resulted in longer survival times for these women, the findings of a new study suggest.
As reported in the current issue of the journal Cancer, Dr. Stephen Chia, from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and colleagues assessed the outcomes of 2,150 women who were treated for metastatic breast cancer, cancer that has spread from the breast to other areas of the body.
The women were separated into four groups according to when new drugs for metastatic breast cancer became available in British Columbia: January 1991 to December 1992, the starting point; January 1994 to December 1995, when paclitaxel and vinorelbine were made available; January 1997 to December 1998, when the aromatase inhibitors and docetaxel were released; and July 1999 to June 2001, when trastuzumab and capecitabine hit the market.
All of the patients had similar characteristics, although women treated later in the decade were more likely to have estrogen receptor-positive cancer, receive follow-up therapy after the initial chemotherapy, and have a longer time between diagnosis and metastasis.
The average survival periods for patients first treated from 1991 to 1992 and from 1994 to 1995 were similar, at 438 and 450 days, respectively. The survival periods for those treated from1997 to 1998 and 1999 to 2001 were significantly longer by comparison: 564 and 667 days, respectively.
Further analysis of the data confirmed that treatment during the late 1990s was associated with significantly longer survival periods than treatment during the early 1990s.
This population-based study of a large group of women recently diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer "is the first to our knowledge that demonstrates a significant improvement in survival over time," Chia's team concludes.
"This improvement in survival appeared to be caused by the availability and use of newer, more effective systemic agents for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer."
SOURCE: Cancer, July 23, 2007, online.
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