The decision to use adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with early stage breast cancer involves the consideration of many factors that traditionally rely heavily on tumor size and lymph node involvement and a limited set of biologic characteristics such as estrogen receptor and HER2 expression.
Recent randomised trials have demonstrated a statistically significant effect of trastuzumab on disease-free survival when used as adjuvant therapy for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 protein (HER2)-positive resectable early stage breast cancer, with a treatment course lasting either 9 or 52 weeks.
The simultaneous detection of CK-19 mRNA- and HER2 mRNA-positive cells in peripheral blood predicts poor clinical outcome for women with early-stage breast cancer.
Detection of CK-19 mRNA-positive CTCs before adjuvant chemotherapy predicts poor clinical outcome mainly in patients with ER-negative, triple-negative, and HER2-positive early-stage breast cancer.
Impact of Her-2 Neu overexpression on outcome of elderly women treated with wide local excision and breast irradiation for early stage breast cancer: an exploratory analysis.