What is Metastatic Breast Cancer? | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Metastatic breast cancer is a stage of breast cancer that has moved to other parts of the body. Eric P. Winer, MD, director of Breast Oncology at the Susan F. Smith Center for Women's Cancers describes metastatic breast cancer symptoms and treatment options. To learn more about how Dana-Farber treats metastatic breast cancer, visit http://www.dana-farber.org/Adu....lt-Care/Treatment-an
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Text: What is metastatic breast cancer? What is the prognosis? How is it treated?
Dr. Winer: When we talk about metastatic breast cancer, we’re talking about a stage of breast cancer. Whether a woman has triple negative breast cancer or estrogen receptor positive breast cancer or HER2-positive breast cancer, there is the possibility that that cancer can spread or metastasize, and that means that the cancer moves to other parts of the body, such as the bones, the lungs, the liver, the brain, or a whole variety of other sites.
Text: What is the prognosis?
Dr. Winer: Women who have metastatic breast cancer can live with it for many years—in some cases many, many, many years—but ultimately it is something that can threaten a woman’s life, and at this point in time, we do not have therapy for women with metastatic breast cancer that can reliably eliminate the cancer and allow a woman to live without treatment and to live a normal lifespan.
Text: How is it treated?
Dr. Winer: The way we treat metastatic breast cancer very much depends on the subtype of cancer. We treat estrogen receptor positive metastatic breast cancer differently from estrogen receptor negative metastatic breast cancer, and we have an entirely different set of treatment approaches for HER2-positive breast cancer. Many of our clinical trials focus on women who have metastatic breast cancer, and we are actively looking at new treatments for women with metastatic breast cancer with the idea that treatments that work in this setting may then ultimately be used in women with earlier-stage breast cancer as well with the goal of preventing them from ever developing metastatic breast cancer.
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