The scientific society reported that 70 medical centers based in Spain, France, Germany, UK and Italy are currenting conducting clinical trials to prove that positive patients with a good prognosis have the chance of receiving less invasive treatments.
“Given side effects and impact of chemotherapy on women’s quality of life, it´s critical to develop therapeutic de-escalation strategies that make it possible to dispense with such a traditional system in properly selected patient profiles,” Alfonso Cortés, researcher and oncologist at the Ramón y Cajal University Hospital in Spain, said.
HER-2+ breast cancer, according to experts, has a high presence of human epidermal growth factor receptor two, a protein that promotes the development of malignant cells.
The research also pointed out that tumors will be scanned by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) before and after treatment, in order to determine whether it is possible or not to predict the pathological response level attained following the non-invasive method.
In order to confirm this strategy is utterly effective and to be able to apply it in routine clinical practice, scientists will carry out a three-year follow-up for women so as to be better acquainted with their progress and to detect whether the relapse rate is equivalent to that obtained by chemotherapy.
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