Inflammatory breast cancer: time to standardise diagnosis assessment and management, and for the joining of forces to facilitate effective research

The term inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) was first used by Lee and Tannenbaum in 1924 ( Lee and Tannenbaum, 1924 ). This uncommon form of breast cancer accounts for 2.5% of all breast cancer in the United States of America ( Robertson et al, 2010 ), there are no published figures for incidence in the United Kingdom. IBC is widely acknowledged as an extremely aggressive form of locally advanced breast cancer with a very poor prognosis ( Hance et al, 2005 ). In the past, progress of research into this condition has been limited by the lack of consistent, definitive and well-documented diagnostic criteria. The generation of evidence-based guidelines for the management of IBC is compromised by the paucity of data that is often of variable quality (e.g., due to small sample sizes). There have been only a few clinical trials designed exclusively for IBC with very few of these being randomised ( Dawood and Cristofanilli, 2011 ). Data have primarily been comprised of small- to modest-sized cohorts of patients, often from trials where inflammatory cancers were included but not the primary target population for the trial. Statistical power to examine IBC cohorts in isolation within these trials is inevitably limited.