Risk of breast cancer recurrence lasts for decades
By Lisa Rapaport Many women who follow initial breast cancer treatment with five years of hormone therapy to keep tumors at bay may still experience new malignancies up to two decades after their diagnosis, a study suggests. Researchers examined data from 88 clinical trials involving 62,923 women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive tumors. After treating ER-positive tumors with chemotherapy, radiation or surgery, women typically get five years of follow-up therapy with daily hormone-based pills – either tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors. The goal of the adjuvant therapy is to destroy any lingering cancer cells not killed by initial treatment. All of the women were cancer-free when they completed five years of adjuvant hormone-based therapy. During the next 15 years, however, cancer returned for 41% of the highest-risk women in the study who originally had the largest tumors that had spread the most beyond the breast, the study found. Even the lowest-risk wome...