5 Questions on Breast Cancer

In black patients with breast cancer, what type of treatment attenuated aggressive recurrent rates? What percentage of women with early-stage invasive breast cancer report at least one severe/very severe toxicity? Test your knowledge in our latest quiz.

Question 1

The correct answer is: C. 1 year, or discontinue earlier if patient develops cardiac toxicity. Other trials have looked at different treatment durations of adjuvant trastuzumab with the goal of reducing toxicity burden or improving outcomes, but the current recommended dose remains 12 months. One recent study examined the cost-effectiveness of a 9-week regimen in this setting.

Question 2

The correct answer is: D. Mastectomy plus reconstruction. The study included over 105,000 women and found that mastectomy plus reconstruction had nearly twice the complication risk of lumpectomy plus whole breast irradiation as well as a higher adjusted total cost.

Question 3

The correct answer is: B. 10%. CLEOPATRA examined docetaxel, trastuzumab, and pertuzumab vs placebo for patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer. The authors of the analysis on TILs noted, “future clinical studies in this cancer subtype should consider TILs as a stratification factor and investigate whether therapies that can augment immunity could potentially further improve survival.” No significant association was observed between TIL values and progression-free survival.

Question 4

The correct answer is: D. 45%. Receipt of chemotherapy or both chemotherapy and radiotherapy were two factors that led to reporting higher toxicity severity, according to the study. The authors recommend that clinicians “collect toxicity data routinely and offer early intervention,” as such toxicity can lead to “unscheduled health care use,” including clinic and emergency department visits and hospitalizations.

Question 5

The correct answer is: C. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The authors of the study reported that aggressive recurrence rates might be attenuated in black patients who receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy and suggest additional studies on recurrence in patients who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy to clarify the significance of this trend.