Breast Cancer

On March 27, 2019, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an alert from its Office of Women’s Health announcing that, after more than 20 years of regulatory oversight, the agency is proposing amendments to the existing policy governing mammography services.

A 12-month supervised exercise program improved cardiovascular function in women undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer—including anthracyclines and taxanes—while cardiovascular function decreased among controls who did not exercise according to the program guidelines.

On March 13, 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ribociclib (Kisqali; Novartis), an oral CDK4/CDK6 inhibitor, in combination with letrozole for the treatment of postmenopausal women with HR-positive, HER2-negative advanced breast cancer.

The authors present their findings from a study testing the effects of an early intervention by the Breast Cancer Navigator on distress.

Updated NCCN Breast Cancer Guidelines

NeuVax + Herceptin may provide a clinically meaningful benefit to breast cancer patients with low to intermediate HER2-expression.

Metastatic breast cancer (MBC) or advanced breast cancer (ABC) signifies that cancer has spread to a distant organ site, either as a progression or a recurrence after a patient has first been diagnosed with an earlier stage of breast cancer. Alternatively, in the case of de novo MBC, MBC or ABC is staged as being metastatic or stage IV at diagnosis.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women and remains a leading cause of cancer-related morbidity, mortality, and resource utilization. For patients with advanced breast cancer, prognosis remains especially suboptimal, primarily because of acquired pharmacologic resistance.

As pointed out in this monograph, breast cancer remains a significant issue for patients and payers, as it is one of the highest-prevalence cancers and, thus, results in high costs.