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Year:
2001
| Volume: 9
| Issue: 3
| Pages: 175-178
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Review Article |
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ADJUVANT THERAPY OF PRIMARY BREAST CANCER: CONSENSUS CONFERENCE, ST. GALLEN
Zora NESKOVIC-KONSTANTINOVIC |
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DOI:
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Abstract: |
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The International Consensus Conference in St. Gallen, Switzerland, on adjuvant therapy of primary breast cancer was one of the most important scientific meetings in the field. The consensus recommendations are supposed to be implemented worldwide, and influence the outcome of the disease in the majority of patients outside clinical trials. It is believed, as pointed out by Sir Richard Peto (U.K.), that the decrease of the breast cancer mortality rate, which fell in 2000 to the lowest level ever noted before, was due to the cumulative effect of small improvements, including the benefit from all adjuvant treatments. The Conference pointed out several important directions for further development: better collaboration between clinical oncology and basic science; greater support to the multicenter controlled randomized studies; the increasing use of media, especially the Internet. However, the main progress of the Consensus Conference in 2001 is the statement that steroid receptors are of fundamental impor- tance, both as prognostic and predictive biological markers in breast cancer. The recognition of the importance of steroid receptor expression, and the relative importance of cut-off values, resulted in a slight increase in using the endocrine adjuvant therapy. The most crucial question should be whether the effect of adjuvant endocrine therapy with tamoxifen could be even more improved. The answers are expected from several ongoing studies. In addition, the importance of the re-evaluation of known, as well as new prognosticators was emphasized. Therefore, as one of the panelists concluded, the growing body of our knowledge on the early breast cancer adjuvant treatment gave more questions, than answers. |
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Key words:
Breast Neoplasms; Neoadjuvant Therapy; Prognosis; Consensus Development Conferences |
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