So this study is for lymph node negative folks. I.e. they had breast cancer but to invasive spread beyond the breast and got a “midrange” score of 11-24 on the Oncotype DX. It turns out folks who did just endocrine (no chemo) therapy had “non-inferior” results to folks who did chemo + endocrine therapy. The authors note “some benefit” for women under 50 in midrange.
Huh. This is interesting to me despite the fact that I had one micrometastasis in a lymph node which put me in RxPonder trial instead of this one. I have to wait until 2022 for the results of my trial, but I can make inferences from TAILORx that there will probably only be “some benefit ” for people like me for doing chemo: under 50, 1-3 positive lymph nodes, Oncotype DX score of 16.
I would like to quote some of the results from TAILORx to put “benefit” into perspective:
“At 9 years, the two treatment groups had similar rates of invasive disease–free survival (83.3% in the endocrine-therapy group and 84.3% in the chemoendocrine-therapy group), freedom from disease recurrence at a distant site (94.5% and 95.0%) or at a distant or local–regional site (92.2% and 92.9%), and overall survival (93.9% and 93.8%)”
So we’re talking about….1%. That’s the difference. I’m hoping “some benefit” is more than like 1-2% because I REALLY wish someone had sat down and talked to me about the reality of being at 1% risk for disease recurrence vs the issues that chemotherapy bring long-term.
For a 1-2% benefit. So…..I would highly recommend early stage breast cancer folks to get some kind of tumor gene assay/test. And I would urge those folks to prod and ask and basically make your oncologist really explain the percentage of benefit vs the actual percentage of risk for all those long-term side effects based on your age.
I’m pretty sure I would have made a different decision if I could do it all again armed with the information I know now.
