Authors: Kazuhiro Araki Shigehira Saji Michelle Gallas Mark Pegram Yasutsuna Sasaki
Publish Date: 2011/08/24
Volume: 19, Issue: 2, Pages: 95-103
Abstract
Trastuzumab is known for its clinical activity in women with HER2overexpressing breast cancer Randomized clinical trials have shown significant improvement in diseasefree and overall survival with trastuzumab administered in conjunction with adjuvant chemotherapy for earlystage HER2positive breast cancer However there is no direct evidence of clinical benefit from adjuvant trastuzumab in patients with nodenegative HER2overexpressing small T1ab breast cancers Previous literature shows that most breast cancers with nodenegative small tumors have a good prognosis but HER2overexpressing disease might still be worse in this population Some recent retrospective studies showed that an adjuvant trastuzumabbased regimen has a better prognostic effect even in patients with nodenegative HER2overexpressing small breast cancers although absolute survival differences were small On the basis of the available literature we believe that trastuzumab should be considered for patients with minimal HER2overexpressing disease although tools for accurate selection of patients at risk of relapse still need to be developed
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