Local Therapy in Stage IV Breast Cancer Patients

摘要

With interest I read the retrospective analysis by Fields et al.1 about breast surgery in stage IV breast cancer and the comment by Khan.2 In this comment Khan clearly focuses on the main issues, namely how to use the retrospective data to design, a prospective trial.Regarding surgery, Khan et al. demonstrated3 that local therapy has to include all standard procedures used in nonmetastasized patients such as axillary surgery and radiotherapy. In respect to stratification criteria, available data show that the number of metastasized organs (visceral versus nonvisceral) and the chemotherapeutic agent rather than comorbidity variants should be taken into consideration.