PATIENTS HAVE AN IMPORTANT ROLE for Breast Cancer

PATIENTS HAVE AN IMPORTANT ROLE for Breast Cancer

Patient empowerment through education will play an increasingly
important role in improving treatment outcomes. To that end, the following
can be recommended:

• Do not hesitate to request a second opinion.

• A patient should ask her oncologist about the best route for cure. If
the oncologist were in the patient’s place, which treatment would
they choose?

• Beware of waiting for a regimen or treatment to reach statistical significance
in a clinical trial before accepting it if there is an intellectual
pathway or compelling information to move ahead.

• Do not accept truncated or overly simplified regimens that may sacrifice
therapeutic efficacy (e.g., FAC-lite).

Finally, it is important for everyone who is involved in the struggle
against breast cancer to remember that the goal of treating breast cancer
patients is cure. For the time being, all we know is that complete
remission is the doorway to cure, and a prolonged complete remission
usually is cure.