Breast cancer patients often run a gauntlet of consultations with specialists, trying to determine what is best for them.

Now an international consensus statement—-it doesn’t get any bigger than that in the consensus department among super-specialists—-calls for a personalized treatment plan for each patient based on that one patient’s tumor characteristics.

Step One: In plain English, each tumor type has characteristics.The doctor gets a report on which tumor cell type the patient has.

Step Two: The doctor reviews what is known about the effectiveness of each available treatment with that cell type and determines which treatment is most likely to help this one patient best.

Step Three: The end result is a personalized care plan for the patient.

If you or someone you are close to is given a diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer, remember the service offered by the National Cancer Institute: 1-800-4-CANCER. They can give you the latest treatment protocol when you call with the cell type and stage of the cancer.

When any breast cancer patient is given a treatment plan, it would be wise to double-check it against this new treatment standard.

Checking doesn’t take long. It is a phone call, live chat or a fax.

You then can be sure you are acting on the latest, best information available.

Trust and verify.

Medpage Today

“In an international consensus statement described as practice-changing, new treatment guidelines for early-stage breast cancer call for use of systemic therapies on the basis of individual tumor characteristics.

“Treatment decisions should focus on the scientific justification for using endocrine therapy, anti-HER2 treatment, and chemotherapy, authors of the 2009 St Gallen International Expert Consensus concluded in guidelines published online in Annals of Oncology.”

The physician summary service story says that the consensus recommendations “call for development of a personalized treatment plan for each patient.”

A personalized plan can be developed using  “a new treatment algorithm based on advances in knowledge about how to match therapy with tumor characteristics to achieve the best outcomes.

“In a prepared statement, panel member Richard Gelber, MD, of Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said the consensus “further refines the treatment algorithm by identifying ‘thresholds for indication’ of each type of systemic treatment modality based on criteria specific to each modality.”

Source: Medpage Today, June 18, 2009

Citation: Ann Oncol 2009; DOI:10.1093/annonc/mdp322.