Editorial: Why are guidelines not followed in clinical practice?

The survival of patients with advanced breast cancer (ABC) has only marginally improved in the last decades [1–4] and improvements have been different according to the molecular subtype. Better outcomes can only be achieved if evidence-based medicine is applied, according to the available knowledge. The implementation of high quality, international clinical practice guidelines is crucial to achieve this goal. These guidelines [5–9] are developed to assist practitioners and patients on appropriate health care for specific disease circumstances.