I wouldn't say that was my big takeaway of this paper or trial. The takeaway I got was there is a giant overall survival benefit for our youngest breast cancer patients to ovarian function suppression over tamoxifen. Sure, there are some low risk patients, where Tam alone is fine, but the majority of super young breast cancer patients present at later stage. If you’re going to give chemo then do not give tamoxifen alone, this needs to be more widely accepted in the community, as it’s been 15 years and the uptake is still too low. Too many oncologists do not give the youngest patients ovarian suppression, as they don't like dealing with how unpopular it is with patients, and difficult it is for patients. Yes it is hard, but it saves lives and it’s our duty to our patients to work with them on side effect management and not just abandon so easily when things get tough, as this is likely our most effective weapon in premenopausal ER breast cancer. We are failing our very young breast cancer patients who have the highest mortality from breast cancer when we do not strongly recommend this and then HELP patients with their side effects so they can stay compliant. This often take a lot of time and extra visits, but it really is so important.
#Breastcancer #SOFT #TEXT
SOFT/TEXT 15-year final results: tamoxifen remains reasonable for low-risk premenopausal HR disease; in young, HER2−, high-risk patients, OFS—and especially exemestane OFS—provides a stronger endocrine backbone.
annalsofoncology.org/article…