Breast Cancer Symposium

San Francisco, CA—When cancer treatment is equal among patients, the outcomes are equal as well, “but there is not equal treatment” within the US population with cancer, according to Otis W. Brawley, MD, Chief Medical and Scientific Officer of the American Cancer Society, and Professor of Hematology, Medical Oncology, Medicine, and Epidemiology at Emory University, Atlanta.

San Francisco, CA—Within weeks of a government-backed recommendation against routine screening mammography in women aged <50 years, the screening rate had fallen below historic levels and subsequently has remained lower than the baseline rate, a group of researchers reported.

San Francisco, CA—The indirect costs of metastatic breast cancer are substantial and are much higher than the costs of early breast cancer, according to what may be the first study to compare costs related to lost productivity in the population with breast cancer.

Whether women receive chemotherapy or surgery first as their initial treatment for breast cancer does not affect long-term localregional recurrence, according to a large case series from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, that was presented at the 2011 Breast Cancer Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—The debate over the clinical significance of occult micrometastases in the lymph nodes of patients with breast cancer continues.

San Francisco, CA—Several studies presented at the 2011 Breast Cancer Symposium shed light on the quality of breast cancer care received by women who are uninsured or receiving Medicaid.