Back to December 2009: Updates from the 2009 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium
New information on long disease-free interval distant metastasis?
- Question from KattyC: Hi, was there any information presented to address long disease-free interval distant metastasis to a single location? I'm ER/PR+, liver tumor resected, oophorectomy. What now?
- Answers —Kathy Miller, M.D. : Your situation is very unusual so there are no studies specifically addressing patients with a long disease-free interval and metastasis that appears limited to one location. In that situation, many oncologists would recommend a treatment very similar to what you received combining local therapy, either with surgery or radiation, with systemic therapy that might treat other areas of disease that were too small to be detected. But since this is such an uncommon situation, it's difficult to collect enough patients to be able to compare different approaches.
- Kristin Brill, M.D., F.A.C.S.: With newer therapies, especially targeted therapies, we see this scenario more than we did in the past and it's becoming an important question of how to treat systemic disease that is localized to one site. For example, isolated liver disease or lung disease or bone disease. In general, the breast cancer community is being more proactive and aggressive in these situations.