Eleni Andreopoulou, MD

Dr. Henderson provides a thoughtful perspective on an important question that many clinicians often consider: can we ditch anthracyclines in favor of other, more effective and/or less toxic chemotherapeutic agents?

Important therapeutic innovations within the past several years have resulted in only modest survival benefits for women with metastatic breast cancer. In this setting, cancer remains incurable and treatment is mainly palliative, involving judiciously applied multiple endocrine, chemotherapeutic, or biologic therapies in an attempt to induce a series of remissions and, ultimately, adequate palliation. At present, we lack both a consensus management algorithm and an ideal treatment model of specific subsets of women.