BACKGROUND Approximately 14% of patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+)/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) metastatic breast cancer (mBC) develop BrM during their lifetime, which is associated with a poor prognosis. We sought to assess the treatment patterns and outcomes of patients with HR+/HER2- breast cancer brain metastases (BCBrM). METHODS We conducted a single-centre retrospective cohort study of 204 patients (≥18 years of age) diagnosed with HR+/HER- mBC who were treated for BrM at the Sunnybrook Odette Cancer Centre between 2008 and 2018. We used descriptive statistics to summarize patient and treatment characteristics and Kaplan-Meier analyses for survival outcomes. The log-rank test was used to compare outcomes of patients with endocrine sensitive versus endocrine resistant disease. RESULTS Among 204 patients with HR+/HER2- BCBrM, the median age at BrM diagnosis was 56 years (range 31 – 93) and the median time between diagnosis of mBC to development of BrM was 15 months (interquartile range [IQR] 3 – 36 months). 135 (66.2%) patients had endocrine resistant disease, 53 (26%) patients had endocrine sensitive disease; endocrine sensitivity was not available for 16 patients (7.8%). The first line of systemic treatment following BrM diagnosis was chemotherapy for 46.1% of patients and endocrine therapy for 28.9% of patients. The median brain-specific (bs) progression-free survival (PFS) was 7 months (95% CI: 5.2 – 9) and median overall survival (OS) was 10 months (95% CI: 8.5 – 13.4). In subgroup analyses, bsPFS (5 months versus 11 months, p<0.001) and OS (7.3 versus 20.7 months, p<0.001) were significantly shorter among patients with endocrine resistant breast cancer than those with endocrine sensitive disease. CONCLUSIONS Patients with HR+/HER2- BCBrM have poor outcomes. A substantial proportion of patients with endocrine resistant disease have particularly short bsPFS and OS, highlighting the need for novel systemic treatment approaches with efficacy in the brain.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Zhu et al. (2024) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: