VIDEO: Survivorship in metastatic breast cancer

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 how we manage patients with metastatic breast cancer. We look at all the usual factors, patient age, comorbidities, patient preferences and then the tumor subtype, as well as what prior treatments a patient has received. And that really determines the treatment plan for the patient in collaboration with obviously the patient preferences. And so it's really pretty individualized one patient to another. Although in general we follow fairly similar algorithms for each subtype of breast cancer in terms of how we sequence through treatments. More and more, we have been more expansive about our definition of cancer survivors which historically has been patients with early stage breast cancer who have not relapsed. And I think the metastatic patient community has felt somewhat excluded by that definition of survivorship. And we really should be including patients living with metastatic breast cancer into the definition of breast cancer survivors. They are living with breast cancer and they face many of the same issues as patients with early stage disease and additional issues. So they can have issues with mental health and sexual health and symptoms related to treatment like brain fog or neuropathy. And we deal with these types of survivorship issues, both in early stage and late stage breast cancer patients. But then there is the additional survivorship issues above and beyond what patients with early stage breast cancer are facing which is this really heightened sense of mortality and fear about what the next few months or next year or years may bring. And so I think more and more we are trying to include patients with metastatic breast cancer, into both the research and implementation of survivorship initiatives.