Deciding About Breast Cancer Chemotherapy

As if being diagnosed with breast cancer wasn’t bad enough, many women with this diagnosis face complicated decisions about what kind of medicine or chemotherapy to take, if any, to reduce their chance of cancer recurrence.  As I discussed in a recent post, the mathematics of such decisions can be hard to comprehend for many patients.  But given that the right choice often depends on patient preferences, it would be great to help patients understand enough of their math to involve them in making the choice.
A group of researchers has developed a tool to help women with these decisions.  Called Adjuvant Online, it is a computer algorithm that takes in information about a specific woman’s cancer, and then produces survival estimates for her, illustrating her chance of survival and breast cancer recurrence based upon whether she chooses one set of treatments versus another… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)
 

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