HealthDay News — According to a study published in JAMA Oncology, adjuvent endocrine therapy (AET) can reduce the likelihood that women diagnosed with certain breast cancers will experience a recurrence of their disease, but these treatments are still too seldom utilized or used incorrectly.
The study, led by Dezheng Huo, MD, PhD, associate professor of public health sciences at the University of Chicago, involved 981,729 women with breast cancer who were included in a nationwide cancer registry.
Of these patients, 818,435 had hormone receptor-positive (HR+) cancer and 163,294 had HR-negative (HR−) cancer.
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The team found that while underuse and misuse of AET decreased over the study period of 2004 to 2013, optimal use has not been achieved and significant variation in care persists. Among patients with HR+ cancer, receipt of AET increased from 69.8% in 2004 to 82.4% in 2013.
Receipt of AET decreased among patients with HR− cancer, from 5.2% in 2004 to 3.4% in 2013. Significant variation was seen by age, race, geographic location and receptor status. Surgery and radiotherapy were found to be the factors most significantly associated with appropriate AET receipt.
“Our findings suggest that local treatment, including surgery and radiotherapy, may play a substantial role in AET decision making,” the authors write. “Facilitation of multidisciplinary team-based care may help optimize guideline-concordant treatment by ensuring patients are not lost to follow-up and are recommended for evidence-based care.”
Reference
Daly B, et al. “Evaluation of the Quality of Adjuvant Endocrine Therapy Delivery for Breast Cancer Care in the United States.” JAMA Oncol. 2017. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2016.6380. [Epub ahead of print]
