VIDEO: Metastatic breast cancer diagnosis treatment plan

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

In terms of the stage distribution of breast cancer in the United States, in general, about 5% of patients in the U.S. diagnosed with breast cancer have stage four disease on presentation. That is, they have de novo metastatic breast cancer. In general, their treatment plan is really the same or similar to patients with recurrent metastatic breast cancer. The difference is that they have not been pre-exposed to therapy and so we might sequence some of the therapies differently because they don't have, you know, necessarily resistant disease. And then the other thing that's been quite a topic of controversy and debate over recent years is what is the role of surgery in patients with stage four metastatic breast cancer diagnosis? CMA Com recently presented results of a large randomized trial that unfortunately did not demonstrate a survival advantage associated with routine surgery in de novo patients. We still do sometimes consider surgery but it's really on a case by case basis as opposed to being a blanket recommendation for all.