Survivorship care after early breast cancer.

This article discusses the changing realities for patients after a diagnosis of early breast cancer due to the various survivorship issues that create a new normality for each patient. The importance of individualised treatment plans, the issues of fertility , of returning to work, of support following end of treatment are only a few of the many questions discussed. The age of personalised treatment needs to address the personalised care in survivorship as well.

International guidelines for management of metastatic breast cancer (MBC) from the European School of Oncology (ESO)-MBC Task Force: Surveillance, staging, and evaluation of patients with early-stage and metastatic breast cancer.

In clinical practice, the surveillance and follow-up of patients with breast cancer (BC) is quite variable. At the 7th European Breast Cancer Conference, the ESO-MBC Task Force convened a series of lectures, followed by open debate, on the use of physical examination, imaging, and laboratory tests in patients with early-stage BC, and for restaging evaluations and follow-up among patients with MBC. Based on the available data, the Task Force recommends against intensive, routine radiologic or blood-based surveillance (with the exception of mammography) in patients with early-stage BC.

International guidelines for management of metastatic breast cancer: can metastatic breast cancer be cured?

A distinctive subset of metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is oligometastatic disease, which is characterized by single or few detectable metastatic lesions. The existing treatment guidelines for patients with localized MBC include surgery, radiotherapy, and regional chemotherapy. The European School of Oncology-Metastatic Breast Cancer Task Force addressed the management of these patients in its first consensus recommendations published in 2007.

International guidelines for management of metastatic breast cancer: combination vs sequential single-agent chemotherapy.

Compared with treatment options for early-stage breast cancer, few data exist regarding the optimal use of chemotherapy for metastatic breast cancer (MBC). The choice of using a combination of cytotoxic chemotherapies vs sequential single agents is controversial. At the 6th European Breast Cancer Conference, the European School of Oncology Metastatic Breast Cancer Task Force convened an open debate on the relative benefits of combination vs sequential therapy.