Factors affecting surgical management following neoadjuvant therapy in patients with primary HER2-positive breast cancer: results from the NeoALTTO phase III trial.

摘要

We thank Berry et al. [1] for their interest in our work. As we have mentioned in our manuscript [2], lack of radiotherapy services or multidisciplinary discussions in some centers participating in our study could partly explain the discordance between the high pathologic complete response (pCR) rates observed and the higher rates of breast conserving surgery (BCS) [3]. We also recognize that a multidisciplinary approach may be conducted differently in different countries, although the difference might be minor for patients within clinical trials. Unfortunately, besides observing these data, it is not possible—to date—to prove the reasons that might have influenced surgeons when deciding on the type of surgery. Hence, we thank Berry et al. for their speculations regarding such reasons.