ESTRO 37: Quality of Life With Targeted Radiotherapy for Early Breast Cancer
Posted: Monday, April 30, 2018
Rebekka Schäfer, MD, of the University Hospital Wurzburg, Germany, and colleagues provide new evidence to suggest quality of life for women treated with accelerated partial-breast irradiation—a targeted, shorter but more aggressive form of radiotherapy—appears to be at least as good as that for women treated with standard whole-breast radiotherapy. Results from the study were presented at the 2018 European Society for Radiotherapy & Oncology (ESTRO) 37 Conference in Barcelona (Abstract OC-0326) and published simultaneously in The Lancet Oncology.
Although previous research has shown the two treatments are equally effective in terms of survival and cancer recurrence in the breast, this study specifically focused on quality of life. “Compared to external radiotherapy, this is a more invasive treatment, so we wanted to see how it affected women’s quality of life and their symptoms, both when they are treated and in the longer term,” said Dr. Schäfer in an ESTRO news release. A 10-year follow-up between the two treatments is planned.
Investigators questioned more than 600 women in 16 hospitals across Europe for up to 5 years at regular intervals following their radiotherapy treatments. After breast-conserving surgery, approximately half of the women received targeted radiotherapy, whereas the other half received whole-breast radiotherapy.
Quality of life in both groups was equally good and remained so over the 5 years, the researchers reported. The only moderate, significant difference between the two treatment groups was in the breast symptoms scale, with worse scores reported after whole-breast irradiation than after accelerated partial-breast irradiation at baseline 2 and at 3-month follow-up.