Home: Oncology Leader Commentary: J. Michael Dixon, MD

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Breast cysts as a cancer risk factor
Biochemistry of breast cysts
Intratumoral estrogen levels in breast cancer
Neoadjuvant endocrine therapy
Response rates with neoadjuvant endocrine therapy
Time to response with neoadjuvant endocrine therapy
Randomized trials of neoadjuvant Arimidex
Response criteria with neoadjuvant therapy
Biologic effect of endocrine agents
Combining endocrine agents
Quality of life with neoadjuvant endocrine therapy
Neoadjuvant endocrine therapy of locally advanced breast cancer
Neoadjuvant therapy of inflammatory breast cancer
Neoadjuvant therapy of elderly patients
Timing of surgery after neoadjuvant therapy
Neoadjuvant therapy with aromatase inhibitors

Neoadjuvant therapy of inflammatory breast cancer

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It depends really on the age of the patient. The accepted standard treatment for inflammatory cancer in patients who are fit to receive that treatment is chemotherapy. And of course you have to practice within guidelines and you’ve got to do something to a patient which another doctor at another center would do. And the standard of care in most centers in the U.K. for inflammatory breast cancer would be chemotherapy. If you have an older patient of 65 or 75 who you thought wasn’t remarkably fit for the sort of chemotherapy you’d want to give to her for inflammatory breast cancer and you did a core biopsy and it was strongly estrogen receptor-positive, then yes, we have given these patients tamoxifen and we have seen significant responses. I’ve got a couple of pictures in my collection of all the inflammation disappearing within a few months of tamoxifen treatment, and even in some of those patients the tumor shrunk to such an extent that we’ve actually proceeded with breast conserving treatment and effective long-term control.

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