The majority of women with the most common type of early-stage breast cancer can safely skip chemotherapy after surgery, according to a highly anticipated new report. The findings came from the largest breast cancer treatment trial ever conducted and showed that most patients who have an intermediate risk of a cancer recurrence - a group that numbers 65,000 women a year in the United States - can avoid chemotherapy and its often debilitating side effects.
"We have been waiting for these results for years," said Allison Kurian, an oncologist at Stanford University who was not involved in the trial. "They are going to change treatment and remove uncertainty for women making decisions."
The same decade-long study had previously confirmed that patients at low risk, as determined by a genomic test of their tumours, can skip chemotherapy. The two groups, taken together, account for about 70 percent of women diagnosed with the most common type of breast cancer. That means more than 85,000 women a year can safely forgo chemotherapy.
Some of those women have been skipping chemotherapy based on less rigorous research. Now, they can have confidence in those decisions, experts said. Other patients may change their treatment approach based on the results of this latest study. The latest results were presented Sunday morning at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago and published in the New England Journal of Medicine.