Good News for Breast Cancer Patients (with HER2-positive)

The first paragraph summed it well - drastic price reduction would enable more breast cancer patients with HER2-positive to be treated with trastuzumab. Trastuzumab treatment is heavily subsidised for patients who fits certain strict criterias in government hospitals. For these patients, this news won't affect them. Who will it benefit then? Besides adhering to KKM …

Breast Reconstruction in Breast Cancer; To Do Before or After Radiotherapy?

Oncoplastic Breast Surgery Oncoplastic breast surgery is an advancement in breast cancer surgery to achieve widened surgical margin and to optimize cosmetic outcome while maintaining reduced local recurrence rate altogether. The importance of a woman's breasts shouldn't be underestimated as it provide a sense of being whole to a woman. Some women would rather avoid …

Another Good News for Breast Cancer Patients (with ER positive, HER2 negative)

In advanced breast cancer, two criteria when deciding suitability for hormonal therapy are: Estrogen receptor (ER) positive and HER2 negative NOT in visceral crisis Visceral crisis is defined as severe organ dysfunction as assessed by signs and symptoms, laboratory studies and rapid progression of disease. Visceral crisis is not the mere presence of visceral metastases …

Early Breast Cancer: Importance of Hormonal Therapy in ER-positive Breast Cancer

A young lady in her early 40s had left breast cancer, pT2N2MO (stage III), ER positive, HER2 negative. She completed surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. When I told her that she will need hormonal therapy for up to 10 years based on latest study, she said the study must be pharma-sponsored to encourage longer use of …

Better Practice: 6 months vs 12 months Adjuvant Trastuzumab (Herceptin) in Early Breast Cancer

Introduction International guidelines highly recommend adjuvant trastuzumab for breast cancer with HER2+; specifically, immunohistochemistry (IHC 3+, over expression) or fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) amplified affect 20% of all breast cancer cases Addition of 1 year of adjuvant trastuzumab to adjuvant chemotherapy significantly improved disease- free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) among women with HER2+ breast …