Dr. Tereffe on Treatment After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer

Welela Tereffe, MD, associate professor, Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the role of radiation therapy in the treatment of patients with breast cancer who previously received neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

This review showed that neoadjuvant chemotherapy could risk-stratify patients into 2 groups: 1 group wouldn’t receive benefit from post-mastectomy radiation, and the other patients would be in a high-risk group that would benefit from escalated treatment.

Tereffe says patients who have received neoadjuvant chemotherapy must be treated in a multidisciplinary fashion.

It is important for both multidisciplinary physicians and the public to know that the short- and long-term toxicities of radiation are very manageable in the modern era, even for patients with left-sided tumors, explains Tereffe.