JCO: The effect of adjuvant chemotherapy on the quality of life of elderly patients with HER2-positive breast cancer

Breast cancer (BC) overexpressing human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2 ) has an aggressive clinical course.

This article reports the results of a study on the quality of life (QoL) of elderly patients with HER2-positive breast cancer.

After surgery, 70-80 years old, HER2-positive breast cancer patients were randomly assigned to trastuzumab (T) group and trastuzumab combined chemotherapy group (T+C).

Overall quality of life comparison

Among 275 patients, 231 (84%) (average age 74) were included in the analysis.

Compared with the T+C group, patients in the T group experienced deterioration in their quality of life at 2 months of treatment (31% vs 48%; p=0.

At 36 months, there were no significant differences in any quality of life assessment items.

In summary, the adverse effects of adjuvant chemotherapy on the overall quality of life, morale and mobility of elderly patients with breast cancer lasted for at least 12 months, but were not observed at 36 months .

Original source:

Taira Naruto, Sawaki Masataka, Uemura Yukari et al.