The Times They Are a-Changin'?

Interesting article in today's NY Times about the ways breast cancer treatment is evolving. There is now widespread (but not unanimous) belief in the oncology community that chemotherapy may only be necessary for women whose breast cancers aren't estrogen-receptive (about 30% of all cases).

Doctors who treat women with breast cancer are glimpsing the possibility of a vastly different future. After years of adding more and more to the regimen — more drugs, shorter intervals between chemotherapy sessions, higher doses, longer periods of a harsh therapy — they are now wondering whether many women could skip chemotherapy altogether.

If the new ideas, supported by a recent report, are validated by large studies like two that are just beginning, the treatment of breast cancer will markedly change.

Today, national guidelines call for giving chemotherapy to almost all of the nearly 200,000 women a year whose illness is diagnosed as breast cancer. In the new approach, chemotherapy would be mostly for the 30 percent of women whose breast cancer is not fueled by estrogen.

So far the data are tantalizing, but the evidence is very new and still in flux. And even if some women with hormone-dependent tumors can skip chemotherapy, no one can yet say for sure which women they might be.

We certainly have no regrets. As far as we're concerned, chemotherapy, even with all its attendant unpleasantries, is a small price to pay for a greater chance at survival. But it speaks well of the new classes of drugs coming out (some of which are in Jody's regimen) that the level of their effectiveness may one day make chemotherapy obsolete.

It's a fascinating article, and well worth the read.