Metastatic breast cancer: a paradigm shift toward a more aggressive approach.

摘要

The idea that metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is an "incurable disease" has clearly been challenged with the development of technology that may detect metastases early and therapies that are affecting the natural history of MBC. Certainly, this study demonstrates cases where MBC patients have lived long periods of time indicating a selected group of patients who do not follow the same clinical progression as those diagnosed with the same disease. In fact, there are a few studies that support this phenomenon1-3 demonstrating an improvement in survival in the last 20 years compared with years prior. Furthermore, the surgical dogma that there is no role for surgical resection of the intact primary or distant sites (metastectomy) has strongly been questioned as clinicians have recognized the alterations in the patterns of progression for those with MBC.