A Breakdown of ER+/HER2- Metastatic Breast Cancer
Sarat Chandarlapaty, MD, gives an overview of ER+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer, including characteristics, diagnosis, and prognosis.
Sarat Chandarlapaty, MD: I’m Sarat Chandarlapaty. I’m a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
As most oncologists know, estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer is the most common breast cancer that we encounter in the clinic. Roughly 65% to 70% of breast cancers are marked by the expression of the estrogen receptor. That’s the real hallmark: that these cancers express the estrogen receptor and are therefore subject to therapy with antiestrogens.
In terms of the diagnosis of advanced-stage breast cancer, the prevalence is roughly 5% of patients present with advanced-stage disease. A larger subset present with early stage and then relapsed later with advanced disease. Regardless of whether at presentation or at relapse, advanced-stage disease carries a significantly worse prognosis, as with most other cancers. The prognosis is that most patients who have advanced disease will die of their disease, but most of these cancers can be treated for many years with systemic therapies. Patients can have good quality of life on those systemic therapies.
Transcript edited for clarity.
