Comparing Prognostic Breast Cancer Tests

Back in the late 2000 ' s, I heard about the new Oncotype Dx test that was just coming available for women who had early stage breast cancer and could help in the decision making process - whether to chemotherapy or not. The test was supposed to tell your risk of recurrence. That was great news (of course I was not eligible because of my medical history...) and many women found their risk and made the big chemotherapy decision.New research has looked at the results of these tests and compared them. They looked at these four tests: Oncotype Dx Recurrence Score, PAM50-based Prosigna Risk of Recurrence Score (ROR), Breast Cancer Index (BCI) and EndoPredict (EPclin)." The analysis, published in JAMA Oncology, funded by Cancer Research UK and involving co-authors at the Institute of Cancer Research, compares four common prognostic tests for breast cancer, and finds that not all are able to accurately predict whether the cancer will return after five years. This could be limiting clinicians ' abilities to advise patients on whether chemotherapy or preventive medication, in the form of endocrine therapy, should be taken.Lead author Dr Ivana Sestak from Queen Mary ' s Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine said: " This is the first time that anyone has directly compared the prognostic performance of these four common commercially-available tests. This gives clinicians and oncologists the opportunity to review all the results and decide upon the test they want to use for their breas...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: breast cancer treatment cancer recurrence test results Source Type: blogs