Assisting Community-Based Oncologists and Surgeons in Making Neoadjuvant Treatment Decisions for Patients with Early Breast CancerAssessing tumor response during neoadjuvant treatment
1:08 minutes.
TRANSCRIPTION:
DR BLACKWELL: So the most important point about following patients on neoadjuvant therapy if you believe it’s important for you to be able to determine if they’re responding is to make certain you have good imaging prior to starting the neoadjuvant therapy. So about once a month, I get referred a patient who’s had 2 cycles of TC or 2 cycles of TAC or 2 cycles of AC — name your chemotherapy — and they’re sent to me because of, quote, progression on neoadjuvant therapy. And when you see these patients — first of all, progression is very rare on neoadjuvant therapy, 1%, if they’re getting chemo — and you look back and there wasn’t good baseline imaging, it’s a real mess to tease out: Are they actually progressing or not? So I think if you’re going to utilize the neoadjuvant setting as a very personalized therapy — I’ll say “experiment,” but more of an observation — you better make certain that you have your neoadjuvant — your pretherapy imaging in order, because I think it is very difficult to monitor precisely their response if there’s not a good response. |