Dr. Piccart on the Implications of the HERA Trial

Martine Piccart, MD, PhD, director of medicine at the Jules Bordet Institute in Brussels, Belgium, discusses the implications of the HERA trial, which looked at two years compared with one year of trastuzumab after adjuvant chemotherapy in women with HER2-positive breast cancer.

Piccart does not believe that the HERA trial answered all relevant questions regarding the optimal use of trastuzumab in the adjuvant setting. Piccart noted that the trial used sequential administration of trastuzumab following chemotherapy and that the results are not transferable to the concomitant administration. The trial showed that the standard of care should remain one year of trastuzumab as two years demonstrated more side effects including mild cardiac side effects.

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