The Challenge of Individualizing Treatments for Patients with Breast Cancer

One of the biggest challenges clinicians and their patients with breast cancer face is to determine a treatment plan for disease with relatively favorable prognosis. Advances in treatment have improved life expectancy for many patients. But advances have come at a steep price because treatments impose substantial morbidity and burden on patients and their families. Concerns about the potential harm of treatments for patients with breast cancer have grown because population-based screening has markedly increased the number of patients diagnosed with relatively favorable prognosis. This has motivated initiatives to evaluate treatment strategies that limit morbidity and burden. However, the impact of these initiatives will be impeded by limited understanding of how decisions about treatment are made. In this presentation Dr. Katz will address the challenges to individualizing treatments for patients with breast cancer with relatively favorable prognosis. He will explore how treatment decisions are made. Finally, he will discuss implications for improving outcomes for individual patients.